• • • ANOMIE, EGOISME, AND THE MODERN WORLD • Suicide, Durkheim and Weber, Modern Cultural Traditions, and the First and Second Protestant Ethos • • by DAVID DANIEL MCCLOSKEY • VOLUME I • • A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Sociology and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of • .. Doctor of Philosophy June 1978 • . Q 51$.$ . : .b .£ • ¥ An Abstract of the Thesis of • David Daniel McCloskey for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Sociology to be taken June 1978 ANOMIE, EGOISME, AND THE MODERN WORLD • SUicide, Durkheim and Weber, Modern Cultural Traditions, and the First and ~cond Protestant EtDos Approved: • G. Renton Jo~son Few have perceived that Durkheim enter~ained two dis­ tinct ~chemas of anomie and egoisme in his classic Suicide. • I shall demonstrate that Durkheim shifted on his analytical axes from the notion that the absence of moral discipline generates modern suicides, to the more significant insight that anomie and egoisme are generated by the presence of ex­ • treme modern cUltural sanctions. Absence/presence, too lit­ tle/too much--these are the key analytical axes arourid which Durkheim's two schemas of suicide revolved. Resting on his image of human nature (homo duplex) as • inherently egoistic and insatiable, the first schema concerns the absence of legitimate moral constraint over the pre-so­ cial ego in the modern transitional crisis. The second schema, which shifted the original burden of insatiability from the • organic half of human nature to modern culture, concerns the presence of cultural sanctions which absolutize individualism and d.rives for "progress and perfection." Only selected parts of the first schema have been perceived and pursued so far by • soc iologists. In the second schema, all four suicidal types are seen as the "exaggerated or deflected forms of virtues." Both ano­ mie and egoisme proceed from common sources; they differ in • their prime mode of expression .. Anomie is active; egoisme passive. When extreme individualism and drives for "progress and perfection" are turned against the external world, we see • • • , anomie--the "infinity of desi~esl'--and the collapse of the will in frustration, as seen in suicides in the economic a­ rena. This ethos,is supported by w~at I shall call the "Anglo Utilitarian Cultural Tradition." Further, when these twin sanctions for absolute individualism and legitimate insatia­ bility are turned inward against the self, we witness ego­ • isme--the "infinity of dreamsl'--and the collapse of the will and imagination in frustration and exhaustion seen in sui­ cides of artists, poets, and intellectuals. This ~thos of angst a~d the "journey into th~ interior," in which suicide • becomes a vocation, is sanctioned by what I shall call the "Romantic-Idealistic Cultural Tradition." ! Finally, these ironic and destructive outcomes of some of our highest aspirations are then linked with Weber's work • in the sociology of religion and culture. As aQ "infinity of desires" sanctioned by a dominant modern cultural tradition, anomie is interpr~ted as the secularized outcome of Protes­ tant "inner-light," "inner-worldly asceticism." As an "in­ • finity of dreams" sanctioned by another dominant contempor­ ary cultural tradition, egoisme is interpreted as the secu­ larized outcome of Protestant· "inner-light," II inner-worldly mysticism." These twin expressions of our highest callings • and heroic ideals are chronic forms of the "moral anarchy" and "diseases of the infinite" plaguing the modern world. Durkheim's moral philosophy of "human finitude" and health as the "golden mean,'" lead us to recognize, then, that when • our virtues are pushed to extremes, they also become, iron­ ically,our special vices. ' . • -- -----~----,.-..-.__""!i; .......I'IIIIASllllllllllilll!l(lIIIllJ.;.....~ r • --ii-­ • • • • • • • • • . .. • --iii-­ • • • • Copyright ~ 1978 by David D. McCloskey • • • • • • • --iv-­ VITA • NAME OF AUTHOR: David Daniel McCloskey PLACE OF BIRTH: Eugene, Oregon DATE OF BIRTH: March 24, 1947 • SCHOOLS ATTENDED AND DEGREES AWARDED: University of Oregon, B.S. 1968 The Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, The New School for Social Research, M.A. 1970 • AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Sociocultural Theory Sociology of Religion and Knowledge Cultural-Historical Sociology • PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Instructor in Sociology, Division of Continuing Edu­ cation, University of Oregon, Eugene, 1970-1~71 • Instructor, Department of Sociology, Seattle Univer­ sity, 1971-1973 Teaching Assistant and Instructor, Department of So­ ciology, University of Oregon, 1973-1975 • Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Seattle University, 1975-1976, lY77-1978 AWARDS: National Science Foundation Graduate Traineeship, 1968-1969 The Graduate Faculty Alumni Award, 1969-1970 • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers in Residence (at Berkeley), 1976-77. PUBLICATIONS: • "What Ever Happened to Anomie"? The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, December 1974. Review Essay on Robert Bellah's Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society, Review of Religious Research, Fall 1975. • "On Durkheim, Anomie, and the Modern Crisis." American Journal of Sociology, May 1976. • • -------------,-------,-------::----..., --v-­ • • • DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to the ladies in my life: Agnes, my mother, • Marsha, my wife, Amanda, my daughter. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Introduction Book One. Part I: Part II: Book Two. Part I: Part II: Book Three. Part I: Part II: Appendix. Part I: Part II: --vi-­ SUMMARY TABLE OF CONTENTS The "Nuclear Structure" of Durkheim's Work The Generic Structure of Durkheim's Doctrine The Genetic-Evolutionary Structure of Durk­ heim's Doctrine Durkheim's First Schema of Suicide Anomie and Egoisme as Caused by the Absence of Social Constraint Over the Pre-Social Ego The Contemporary Transitional Crisis and Modern Moral Anarchy Durkheim's Second Schema: Anomie, Egoisme, and the Modern World A Critical Review of Durkheim's Key Presupposi­ tions Suicide as Generated by the Presence of Cultural Sanctions What Ever Happened to Anomie? A Critical Review of Main Streams of Develop­ ment of Anomie in the Sociological Literature Confusions Over Durkheim's Typology of Suicide • --vii-­ • DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS • Introduction Page xxi Book One. The "Nuclear Structure" of Durkheim's Work Synopsis. 1 • Chapter One: Dichotomies and Dialectics 7 Chapter Two: Homo Duplex: Durkheim's Doctrine of the Dualism of Human Nature Preface. 12 • A. The Multiplicity of Meanings of the "Individual" in Durkheim's System of Sociology Preface. 17 1. Generic Versus Genetic-Evolutionary Meanings of the "Individual" 17 • 2. The Conflation of Meanings of the "Individual" on the Generic Level 20 B. Insatiability Versus Moral Discipline: Durkheim's Early Version of His Doctrine of the Dualism of Human Nature • 23 C. A Preliminary Critique 38 D. Durkheim's Tragic Vision of the Human Condition: His Later Notion Of the Duality of Human Nature Preface. 44 • 1. Ego is to Person as Body is to Soul 47 Chapter Three: Conscience and Consciousness 59 • Chapter Four: Durkheim's Causal Model: Substructural Social Morphological Processes and Superstructural Collectively Representational Processes 68 Preface. 71 A. Social Morphological Processes 74 • B. Durkheim's Key Link Between Social Morphology and Social Physiology: "Moral Density," Intensity, and Social Energy 78 C. "Social Physiology" and "Collective Representations": Durkheim's Theory of Generic Sociocultural Process 86 • • --viii-­ Preface. 86 • 1. Social Morphological Implosions, The Emergence,of Socie­ ty, and Transformation of Egos into Moralized Persons , 94 2. The Break From the Organic'Cage: Manis Ascent from the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom 100 • 3. Collective Representations as Symbols of Group Self- Consciousness ' 105 Renewals 4. Alternating Phases of Sociocultural Life and Periodic Preface. 110 • 5. The Sacred and the Profane: Fundamental Tensions in sociocultural Life Preface. 124 • a. Transformation of the Ego, Alternating Phases of Socio­ cultural Life, and the Emergence of the Sacred and the Profane 126 b. The Positive Pole of Sociocultural Life: Attributes of the Sacred 128 c. The Contagiousness of the Sacred 136 d. • pollution and Walling ,Off the Profane: The Negative or Ascetic Rites 140 e. Types of Sacral Interdictions 147 6. Crystallization and Autonomization of'Symbolism 153 a. The Passage from Fluid to Crystallized Symbolism 154 • b. The Autonomization of Symbolic Forms 158 7. The Building of Classificatory Systems:Cosmization Through SymbOlic Equations • Preface. 166 a. Durkheimls Socio-logic: The Links Between Symbols and Groups 168 b. Analogy and Metaphor: The Structure of Symbolic Equa­ tions 178 • c. Levi-Straussls Notion of Totemism as a Primitive Equational Structure 182 d. Sacral "Contagion" as a Primi~ive Metaphorical Link 184 • e. Symbolic Equations and the Legitimate Foundations of Moral and Intellectual Authority of Collectivities 190 8. Symbolic Transformations: The Positive Communion Rites Preface. 202 • • --ix-­ a. Symbolic Metamorphoses: The Sacred and the Profane Are Not Closed to Each Other 204 • b. The Transition from Negative to Positive Rites 208 c. The Ambiguity of the Notion of Sacredness 217 d. The Positive Cult: Oblation and Sacrificial Communion 224 Chapter Five: The Evolutionary Tree of Sociocultural Life • Preface. 230 A. The Tree of Sociocultural Life as a Metaphor of Multi- lineal Evolution 234 • B. Multilineal Evolution, Sociocultural Sedimentation and Evolutionary Survivals 238 Chapter six: The Primitive Sacral Complex: Womb of Society and Culture 245 Preface. 247 • A. Precedents 253 B. Durkheim's Genetic-Evolutionary Methodology. 261 C. Phases in Durkheim's Development of the Notion of the Primitive Sacral Complex • Preface. 266 1. The Early Phase: Religion in Primitive Society as Repressive 267 2. The Second Phase: Durkheim's Breakthrough to a Sociology of Religion 277 • 3. The Third Phase: The Primitive Sacral Complex as Womb of Society and Culture 286 D.Shifts in the Connotational Load Carried by the Term ."Religion" in Durkhei,m' s Sociology 297 • Chapter Seven: Durkheim on Civilizations and Inter-Civi­ lizational Process 306 Chapter Eight: The Emergence of the Person Through History Introduction. 321 • A. The Generic Phenomenologies of Personhood Preface. 332 l. Ego and Person 333 2. Conscience and Consciousness 334 • 3. Collective Symbolic Process 336 4. Origins of Structures of Conscience 340 5. Origins of Structures of Consciousness 349 • • --x-­ B. The Emergence of the Person Through History Introduction. 357 • 1. Societal Differentiation and Individuation Preface. 358 a. Durkheim's Notion of "Mechanical Solidarity" 360 • b. Durkheim Versus Spencer on the Nature of "Military Societies" 366 c~ Altruisme as an Index to "Mechanical Solidarity" 371 d. The Chief as the Emergence of Individual Physiognomy 374 • e. Durkheim Versus Toennies on The Division of Labor and Community and Society 377 f. Obstacles to the Progress of Organic Solidarity 386 g. The Progress of Organic Solidarity 392 • 2. The SymbOlic Construction of the Person: The Dialectic of Impersonality and Personality Preface. 403 a. The Transitional Phase 406 b. Individual and Totem 410 • c. The Emergence of the Notion of the Soul as the Foundation of Personhood 412 d. Conclusion: Soul and Person 419 3. The State as Guarantor of Individual Rights 424 • 4. Law and the Person: The Development of Individual Property and Contract 437 5. Christian Universalism and the Sanctification of the Person 449 • 6. The Modern Cult of Moral Individualism 458 7 . Durkheim's Critique of Anglo Utilitarian and Romantic-Idealistic Notions of Individualism 474 Footnotes 485 • • • • --xi-­ • • • • • • • • • Book Two. Durkheim's First Schema of Suicide Synopsis. 489 Part I: Anomie and Egoisme as Caused by the Absence of Historical Social Constraint Over the Organic Ego Preface. 492 Chapter One: Egoisme Preface. 499 A. Confessional Group Influence on Suicide Rates 501 B. The Anomaly of the Jews: High Intellectualism and .Low Suicide Rates 509 C. Suicide Increases with Knowledge: An Apparent Correlation 511 D. Egbisme as Lack of Social Integration 516 E. Egoisme Explained: The Release of the Pre-Social Ego from Traditional Constraints 520 Chapter Two: Altruisme as Obligatory Self-Sacrifice: Conscience in Mechanical Solidarity and the Primitive Sacral Complex Preface. 533 Chapter Three: Anomie as the Release of the Insatiable Desires of the Pre-Social Ego from Traditional Moral Discipline Preface. 546 A. Anomie: A Preview 547 B. The Generic Need for Limitation of the Passions of the Pre-Social Ego 549 C. The Social Schedule as the Mechanism Regulating Wants 556 D. The Release of the Ego's Insatiable Passions in the Modern Transitional Crisis 562 E. Matrimonial Anomie: Divorce as Deregulation 579 Chapter Four: Fata1isme and Passive Resignation in the Face of Oppressive Moral Reg1ementation .584 Part II: The Contemporary Transitional Crisis and Modern Moral Anarchy Preface. 587 Chapter Five: The Anomie Division of Labor Preface. 595 A. The Moral Creativity of Organic Solidarity 596 • • --xii-­ B. The Conflict Between Labor and Capital: The Separation of Producer and Worker 602 • C. Durkheim's Polemic Against Comte and the Need for a Value Consensus to Integrate Industrial Society 604 D. Pre-Organic Solidarity and Deregulation of Relations Between Worker and Employer, Consumer and Producer 607 Chapter Six: The Forced Division of Labor • Preface. 612 Chapter Seven: Durkheim's Analysis of Socialism: A Historically Specific Response to the Growth of Market Capitalism • Preface. 619 A. The Dual Nature of Socialism 621 B. Durkheim's Definition of Socialism 624 C. The Contrast Between Communism.and Socialism 625 • D. Changes in Eighteenth Century Communist Theory: Seeds of Socialism 633 E. Saint-Simon's Explanation of the Origins of the Industrial System and the Modern Transitional Crisis • Preface. 636 F. Durkheim's Critical Reflections on Saint-Simon's Doctrine: Economics as Amoral Activity 648 • Chapter Eight: Durkheim's Therapeutic for the Modern Crisis of Anomie and Egoisme: The "Moral Mechanics" of Occupational Groups Preface. 662 A. "Moral Mechanics" and Group Life 668 B. "Moral Particularism" and OCcupational Groups 671 • C. Economic Deregulation as Anomie Norm 674 D. The Lacuna of Intermediate Groups in the Modern Crisis 682 • E. The "Moral Mechanics" of Professional Groups as the National Solution to the Crisis of Anomie and Egoisme 687 F. "Quelques Remarques sur les Groupements Professionels II 697 G. The Nature and History of Professional Groups in European Society 701 • Footnotes 708 • • --xiii-­ Book Three. Anomie, Egoisme, and the Modern World 709 Synopsis. • Part I: A Critical Review of Durkheim's Key Premises 712 Chapter One: The Location of Egoism and Insatiability: A Critique of Durkheim's Doctrine of Homo Duplex Preface. 712 • A. Homo Duplex as a Rhetorical Mistake 714 1. Economic Deregulation as Anomie Norm: Durkheim's Devaluation of the Utilitarian Economy 714 2. A Fc'operly Durkheimian View of the Economy 719 • 3. Ego and History: Parsons' Mistaken Image of Durkheim as a Communist Theorist 724 4. Conclusion 725 B. Homo Duplex as a Biological Mistake 728 • C. Homo Duplex as a Sociological Mistake Preface. 733. 1. Animal Instinct Versus Human Conscience 733 • 2. Which Way the Causal Arrow: From Biology to Culture or from Culture to Biology? 737 3. A Brief Sociocultural Look at the Generation of Needs and Desires 740 • 4. The Progress of Social Science Depends on the Substitution of Sociocultural Explanations for Bio­ logical and Psychological Reductions of Human Action 742 D. Durkheim's Shift from Anomos to Alogos 746 • Chapter Two: A Critical Review of Durkheim's Causal Model Preface. 750 A. A Brief Review of Durkneim's Causal Model 751 1. Substructural Social Morphological Processes Linked with Superstructural Cultural Processes 751 • 2. Generic and Genetic-Evolutionary Relations Between Substructure and Superstructure 753 3. Durkheim Versus Levy-Bruhl 756 B. Autonomization of Collective Symbolism 760 • 1. Durkheim Versus Marx 762 2. The Autonomization of Cultural Forms as Synthesis and Synergetic Emergence 768 • • --xiv-­ Chapter Three: Transitions: Durkheim's Growing Cultural Realism Preface. 781 • A. "Social Currents" as Energetic Carriers of Modern Anomie and Egoisme 783 B. A "Marginal Leaven of Anomie," Charismatic and Creative Deviants, and Sociocultural Progress 784 • C. Durkheim's Growing Emphasis on Religion 792 D. Durkheim's Emphasis on the Civi1izationa1 Significance of Christian Culture 794 E. Durkheim's Cultural Account of the History of Education in France 804 • F. Durkheim' s Move Toward Civi1izationa1 Analysis 80'6 Chapter Four: The Convergence Between Durkheim and Weber Preface. 812 • A. Tiryakian's Mystery Problem: The Mutual Unawareness of Durkheim and Weber '815 B. Conflicts Over Comparison and Contrast of Durkheim and Weber 816 • C. Dialogues Across the Centuries: Durkheim and Weber's Cultural Traditions 822 D. A Partial Inventory of Important Comp1ementarities and Convergences Between Durkheim and Weber 831 1. Some Important Methodological Comp1ementarities Between Durkheim and Weber 832 • E. Durkheim and Weber, Anomie and Protestantism 836 Chapter Five: Toward Durkheim's Second Schema Preface. 840 A. A Paradigm in Crisi~: Which Way Out? 841 • B. Some Criteria for a More Adequate Reconstruction of Durkheim's Schema of Suicide 849 1. General Paradigmatic Requirements 851 2. Specific Requirements for a New Schema of Suicide 852 • C. 'Other Observers' Insights into Durkheim's Second Schema of Suicide 854 D. The Social Element of Suicide: Durkheim's Growing Sociocultural Realism and the Causal Significance of "Suicidogenetic Currents" • Preface. ' 861 • • --xv-­ • • • • • • • • • Part II. Durkheim's Second Schema: Suicide as Generated the Presence of Cultural Sanctions 875 Preface. All Four Suicidal Types as Caused by the Presence of Extreme Cultural Sanctions 876 Chapter Six: Altruisme, Fatalisme, and Absolutizing Collec­ tivism and the Traditional Schedule of Satisfaction Preface. 881 A. Altruisme as the Active Acceptance of the Overwhelming Mandates of the Primitive Sacro-Magical Collective Conscience 883 B. Fatalisme as Passive Resignation to Oppressive Reglemen­ tation by the Collective Conscience and the Traditional Social Schedule 892 Chapter Seven: Anomie, Egoisme, and Modern Cultural Sanc­ tions for Absolute Individualism ,and Legitimate Insa­ tiability 895 Chapter Eight: Anomie as the Active Externalization of Absolute Individualism and Legitimate Insatiability . Preface. 902 A. '!'he Psychological Characteristics of Anomie 904 B. The Prime Modern Sociocultural Sites of Anomie Desires 909 C. Insatiability: Modern Man's Dis-ease of the Infinite 915 D. Durkheim's Philosophy of Human Finitude: Health.and Virtue as Coming from a "Golden Mean" 920 E. Marginalism and Regression to the "Golden Mean" 928 F. Legitimacy of wants and the Social Schedule of Satisfaction 935 G. The Origin and Continuing Sanction for Our Modern Revolution of Rising Expectations 944 H. The Moral Legitimation of Absolute Individualism and Insatiability in Modern Economies: The Utilitarian Ethos 965 Chapter Nine: Egoisme, the Infinity of Dreams, and the Modern Anguished Journey into the Interior Preface. 974 A. The Psychology of Egoisme: Passive Introversion and the Litany of Modern Angst 977 B. The Main Sociocultural Sites of Egoisme and the "Infinity of Dreams" 986 C. Egoisme as the Ironic Outcome of the Modern "Cult of Individualism" 990 • --xvi-­• D. Egoisme and Angst in the Modern Romantic "Journey into the Interior" 994 • Chapter Ten: Anomie and Egoisme, Modern Cultural Traditions, and the First and Second Protestant Ethos Preface • 999 1. . Cultural Traditions as an Interpretive Perspective 1001 2. Outline"of Four Major Western Cultural Traditions 1006 e 3. The Franco-Latin "Laic"-Positivist Cultural Tradition 1009 4. The Anglo-American Empiricist-Utilitarian Cultural Tradition 1015 • 5. The Romantic-Idealistic Cultural Tradition 1026 Footnotes 1035 Appendix. What Ever Happened to Anomie? 1036 .., • Introduction. Anomie: A Protean Concept 1038 Part I: A Critical Review of the Main Streams of Develop-" ment of Anomie in the Sociological Literature 1038 Chapter One: Parsonian Anomie 1042 • Chapter Two: The Halbwachian Stream 1048 Chapter Three: Mertonian Anomie: Structural-Cultural Malintegration Preface. 1052 • A. Merton's Anomie: The Theory and Its Significance 1054 1. The Historical Importance of Merton's Model in American Sociology 1054 2. Textual Problems in Interpreting Merton's Anomie 1056 • 3. The Mertonian's Claim to Durkheim'sCharisma-on-Deposit 1061 4. Merton's Theory of Malintegrationof Goals and Means in the Context of American Society and Utilitarian Culture • 1074 5. The Underlying Schematic Structure of Merton's Typology 1078 B. Merton's First Type of Anomie 1082 • 1. Extreme Emphasis on Success Attenuates the Legitimacy of Institutional Channels (Upper and Middle Class Deviancy) 1082 2. Moral Alchemies and the American Cult of Success 1085 • • --xvii-­ 3. Upper and Middle Class Deviancy: Pragmatism, Achieve­ ment, and Legality 1096 • C. Merton's Second Type of Anomie 1102 1. The Typology of Individual Adaptations to Malintegra­ tion 1102 2. Adaptation I: Conformity 1104 • 3. Differential Responses to Ma1integration: The Case of Structurally Blocked Strata 1109 4. Anomie, Crime, and Poverty 1117 5. Merton Versus Durkheim and Weber 1120 • Chapter Four: Mertonian Anomie: Extensions Preface. 1127 A. Parsons' Extension 1127 B. Robert Dubin's Typology 1132 • C. Richard Cloward's Contribution 1135 D. Frank Harary'sContribution 1139 Chapter Five: Critiques of Merton's Theory of Anomie Preface. 1142 • A. Specific Criticisms 1143 B. Albert Cohen's Critique 1147 C. Merton's Response to Cohen 1152 • Chapter six: Srolian Anomia 1159 Chapter Seven: Cruss-Overs Between Srolian Anomia and Mertonian Anomie Preface. 1166 • A. Stephen Cole's Defense of Mertonian Anomie 1166 B. Merton's Program for Empirical Research into SS&A1176 C. Research Cross-Overs Between Mertonian Anomie and Srolian Anomia 1184 • Chapter Eight: Miscellaneous Developments of Anomie Preface. 1188 A. New Scales and Empirical Research 1188 B. New Theoretical Formulations of Anomie 1195 • • • --xviii-­ • • • • • • • • • Part II: Confusions Over Durkheim's Introduction~ Chapter Nine: Reductions A. Poggi and the Four-Fold Table B. Barclay Johnson's Reduction C. Whitney Pope's Work Chapter Ten: Rescues of Durkheim's A. Parsons' Rescue 1. Parsons on Egoisme and Altruisme Typology of Suicide Suicide Schema a. The Significance of Egoisme and Protestantism b. Parsons on Altruisme 2. Parsons' Anomie as the "Hobbesian Dilemma" 1207 . 1210 1210 1213 1220 1241 1241 1243 1245 1250 1251 3. Parsons on Durkheim's Methodological Breakthroughs in His Theory of Social Control and Suicide 1257 4. Critical Summary 1267 B. Dohrenwend and Fata1isme 1273 C. Neyer, Mawson, and Cresswell 1276 D. Anthony Giddens' Work 1279 E. Eugene Hynes: Suicide and Homo Duplex 1285 1287Footnotes Bibliography 1288 • • --xix-­ FIGURES • • Figure I--Durkheim's Initial Typology page xxxii Figure 2--Durkheim's First Schema xxxv. Figure 3--Durkheim's Second Schema xxxvi Figure 4--Durkheim's First Schema 493 Figure 5--Wants (needs/desires) 741 • Figure 6--Durkheim's Second Schema 879 Figure·7--Merton's Initial Schema 1078 • Figure • Figure Figure Figure 8--Merton's Full Schema 1080 9--Parsons' Table of Deviant Behavior 1130 10--Dubin's Typology of Deviant Adaptations 1134 Il--Parsons' Interpretation of Durkheim's Typology of Suicide • Figure 12--Hynes's Schema Figure 13--Hynes's Reconstructed • • • • 1242 1286 Schema 1286 • • --xx-­ • • • "Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast." (Pascal) • • • • • • • --xxi-­ • INTRODUCTION • Few have perceived that Durkheim entertained two dis­ tinct schemas of anomie and egoisme in his classic Suicide. I shall demonstrate that Durkheim shifted on his analytical • axes from the notion that the absence of moral discipline generates modern suicides, to the more significant insight that anomie and egoisme are generated by the presence of ex­ treme modern cultural sanctions. Absence/presence, too lit­ • tle/too much--these are the key analytical axes around which Durkheim's two schemas of suicide revolved. Resting on his doctrine of human nature (homo duplex) as inherently egoistic and insatiable, the first schema con­ • cerns the absence of legitimate moral constraint over the pre-social ego in the modern transitional crisis. The second schema, which shifted the original burden of insatiability from the organic half of human nature to modern culture, con­ • cerns the presence of cultural sanctions which absolutize in­ dividualism and drives for "progress and perfection." Only selected parts of the first schema have been perceived and pursued so far by sociologists. • In the second schema, all four suicidal types are seen as the "exaggerated or deflected forms of virtues." Both ano­ mie andegoisme proceed here from common sources: they differ I in their prime mode of expression. Anomie is active: egoisme • passive. When extreme individualism and drives for "progress and perfection" are turned against the external world, we see anomie--the "infinity of desires"--and the collapse of the will in frustration, as seen in suicides in the economic • arena. This ethos is supported by what I shall call the "An­ glo Utilitarian Cultural Tradition." Further, when these twin sanctions for absolute individualism and legitimate in­ • , • • --xxii-­ satiability are turned inward against the self, ~~nessI e.s.QJ~the "infinity of dreams "--and the collapse of the will and imaginatio~~strationand exhaustion seen in • suicides of artists, poets, and intellectuals. This ethos of angst and the "journey into the interior," in which sui­ cide becomes a vocation, is sanctioned by what I shall call the "Romantic-Idealistic Cultural Tradition." Finally, these ironic and destructive outcomes of some of our highest aspirations may then be linked with Weber's work in the sociology of religion and culture. As an "infin­ • ity of desires" sanctioned by a dominant modern cultural • tradition, anomie is interpreted as the secularized outcome of Protestant "inner-light," "inner-worldly asceticism." As an "infinity of dreams" sanctioned by another dominant con­ temporary cultural tradition, egoisme is interpreted as the secularized outcome of Protestant "inner-light," "inner­ worldly mysticism." These twin expressions of our highest • callings and heroic ideals are chronic forms of the "moral anarchy" and "diseases of the infinite" plaguing the modern world. Durkhej..m's ~al philosophy of "human finitude" and health as the "golden mean," lead us to recognize, then, that • , = when our virtues are pushed to extremes, they also besome, ,.­ ironically, our special vices. I first heard of Emile Durkheim and anomie as an un­ dergraduate sociology major. But it was not until graduate • school that, among my readings into Marx, Weber, Durkheim and others, I first encountered Suicide. Having rejected the positivist scientific ethos, reading Durkheim was, at first, an unpleasant experience. As with many others, all I could • see at first were pages and pages of statistics, strident positivist declarations, extreme sociologism, hypostatizing social realism, a conservative world-view, and so on; after all, to Durkheim wasn't society all and the individual noth­ _. ­ ing? Besides, the very presentation of the book itself repel­• led me the cover was blood red, I was interested in neither despair nor suicide, Simpson's psychoanalytically-oriented • • • --xxiii-­ preface set me off, the table of contents was relegated to the back of the book, and so on! I was ready to believe the worst I had heard about Durkheim. Little did I then know that I would corne to dwell in this book and this man's mind for the next seven years! • During several rereadings, an interesting shift in my perception of Suicide and Durkheim began to emerge. The sta­ tistics seemed to fade from view, and Durkheim's moral philo­ sophy carne into focus. It seemed as if, in 1969, I had dis­ • covered something different, almost a different Suicide than commonly reported, a book within a book. Especially compel­ ling to me was Durkheim's anatomy of the "moral anarchy" of the modern world--the destructive "diseases of the infinite," • ending in ecocide or suicide, which I sawall about me. Here, • then, Durkheim offered profound insights in my search for the origin and ground of many of the negative aspects of the mod­ ern world. At the time, I hardly suspected that my search for a fundamental, non-Marxian or Freudian, critique of the mod­ ern world would lead me deep into Durkheim~ nor did I antici­ pate that my attempts to tell others of the potential signi­ • ficance of my discovery would necessarily involve a long struggle to free myself and others of deeply rooted stereo­ types of Durkheim, a struggle that would remake me in the process. And, although I had earlier liked Weber much more than Durkheim, the experience of corning to have two polestars • stimulated effort to bring their work together, especially their profound and ironic anatomies of the modern world-­ ~uicide and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of caPital-'~ l.sm. • With these two classics as guides, in about 1971 I em­ barked upon an arduous journey on two parallel paths--inten­ sive reading of Durkheim's other works, major and minor, on the one hand, and on the other intensive search through the • i\ secondary literature on Durkheim and anomie. I sought there several insights: a new way of conceptualizing Durkheim's f notions of anomie and egoisme, indeed, of reconstructing his ' .~ • • --xxiv-­ whole typology of suicide, and more generally, to attempt to • grasp the foundational or "nuclear structure" which informed all of Durkheim's life-work. In this task I was fortunate to begin my systematic reflection during a great renaissance of of interest in Durkheim: almost weekly new books and articles • poured forth from the presses. Durkheim was "in the air" everywhere it seemed: such convergence of interest was exhil­ irating for this scholarly apprentice. And, while learning much from Parsong and other stan­ • dard accounts stemming from the first great revival of inter­ est in Durkheim during the 1930's, I found, to my dismay, that many did not recognize what I thought to be a signifi­ cant discovery: moreover, my own incorporation through "osmos­ • is" of certain premises rooted in the secondary literature was actually leading me astray. For I was, like so many oth­ ers, simply taking over unfounded images from the secondary literature at the same time as I was struggling to interpret • Durkheim directly. Hence, reliance on questionable secondary accounts in my first faltering attempts to conceptualize Durkheim's schema of suicide faced me with the difficult task of learning to unlearn popular stereotypes. • In my struggle to free myself from two pervasive secon­ dary accounts--Merton's version of anomie and Parsons' ver­ .. "------------_. sion of Durkheim--I found help in many places, especially in the works of two contemporary British sociologists, Anth~~y Giddens and Steven Lukes. With their assistance I began to• ::::=---­ move toward more faithful exegesis, and, thus, to begin to reconstruct not only Durkheim's suicide typology, but also the paradigmatic structure informing all his work. While my • conceptual breakthrough in 1972 to the present formulation of Durkheim's two schemas of suicide was largely independent, I gratefully acknowledge that I learned invaluable lessons from these and other insightful observers. • However, I soon discovered that as I tried to relate my discovery to others, many sociologists held stubbornly to certain established stereotypes. For example, when I men­ • • • --xxv-­ tioned Durkheim, they thought of Parsons' famous account in The structure of Social Action, and when I spoke of anomie, • it was Merton's essay "Social Structure and Anomie" which seemed automatically to come to mind. While remaining valua­ ble in a number of ways, these accounts had become like bar­ nacles clinging to the past; they had become, unfortunately, obstacles to deeper insight and scientific progress. I had, therefore, to dislodge these and other obstacles from my path. • In truth, our dilemma went deeper. For I discovered that anomie had become a protean concept. As with so many other paradigmatic notions, like alienation or "The Protes­ tant Ethos," anomie had come to mean so many different things • to so many differ~P1e that it had lost specific meaning. Then I realized that the transformation of Durkheim's con­ cepts into amorphous, protean notions capable of meaning al­ most anything was an instance of a wider, typical process. • - -------­ • Somehow, as if by some iron law, we manage to forget (eg. Maine's Ancient Law), or distort (eg. Weber's Protestant Ethic ••• and Durkheim's Suicide) many of the very paradigms which constitute our basic intellectual capital (see also • Glock and Hammond, 1973:409). Indeed, I fear that the pro­ found works of our founding fathers--whose charisma we are so quick to cash in on--are more often cited than read, more often ab~orbed through secondary or even textbookish ac­ counts than wrestled with in the original, more often read fragmentari1y than in the context of the pioneer's life­ work and life-context, and more often simply misconstrued, • usurped, or selectively altered than understood or legiti­ matelyextended (see McCloskey, 1974). Indeed, in the ser­ ies of interpretations which come to constitute any tradi­ tion, there is the same sort of drift and displacement of • goals and meanings which characterize the typical life-his­ tory of any institution. Inevitably, a hidden law of cul­ tural entropy seems at work, for later generations stray • • • --xxvi-­ from the full meaning and intention of the original break­ through. Without undue irony, might we not call this sadly • inevitable sociocultural process the "routinization of charisma-on-deposit"? Hence, the necessity of periodic renewals or renais­ sances are built into this on-going process, which affects • sociology as well as society-at-Iarge. Specifically, I found that Durkheim's sociological charisma, stemming from Suicide and other works, had become routinized, distorted, emptied of meaning, on the one hand, and on the other his doctrine and anomie in particular were beset by conflicting interpretations. Thus, I came to find myself in the peculiar position of one who, having started by rejecting Durkheim and much of the sociological tradition, came to return to • \ this tradition in order to recover lost meanings. And, of course, the reappropriation of meaning is a continuous pro­ cess. • Faced with a paradigm in crisis, and the need to re­ • turn to the source of the tradition, what specific strategy could I evolve for recovering lost meanings and reconciling conflicting interpretations? I was like a miner of a vein of gold who had been granted a share in a vast common land­ • claim. Here, one was faced with a welter of conflicting claims; further, some refined ore proved to be valuable, yet there was much dross and pilings to be cleared away. In this way I took up mining full-time, and this mining was • systematic exegesis; like mining raw ore, it was the hard­ est work I've ever done. I began to sink shafts both vertically and horizon­ tally into some of the richest deposits. My strategy, then, • was this: to perform, first, a systematic exegesis of the basic strata underlying all of Durkheim's work, and then perform a systematic exegeis of Durkheim's sociology of suicide. Exegesis, then, involved, first, an in-depth "stratigraphy," and then a systematic "topography." Accord­ ingly, my strategy is to systematically compare and contrast • --------------------- • • --xxvii-­ an in-depth interpretive exegesis of Durkheim's foundational paradigms or deep "nuclear structure" informing all his work • with a systematic exegesis of his special sociology of sui­ cide. Hence, this dissertation will alternate between Durk­ heim's general sociology (the "nuclear structure" of his work, see Book One), and his specific sociology of suicide • (see Book Two). Further, in the first part of Book Three, we shall review shifts in Durkheim's basic premises, and then bring these two movements of thought together in Part II of Book Three by reconstructing Durkheim's schema of suicide. • My intention here is to provide the systematic, de­ tailed, comprehensive documentation needed to reach a clear­ er understanding of Durkheim's work, and to enable us to re­ solve conflicting claims about the significance of his work. \ My hope has been to write the definitive work on Durkheim's schemas of anomic and egoismic suicide. Patient, systematic - -" -­ • exegesis, then, is the main reason for the extraordinary length and denseness of this dissertation; in a real sense, • Durkheim himself directed this effort. Further, since dis­ sertations, being self-financed, are free from the normal pressures of publishing, I realized that only in this format could I hope to provide full documentation for my claims. The demise of monographs and the tyranny of the ten-page article led me to seize upon this unique opportunity for painstaking scholarship. • At the same time, the length of this dissertation is • also a function of the difficulty of the task facing us. For the real scholarly burden was bequeathed us by Durkheim himself--for it was he who left us vast tracts of material, some of which remain largely unexplored territory to this day, while other parts remain largely misunderstood. We do not yet know Durkheim well enough; far too often our claims on his work (eg. concerning anomie) are unjustified; more­ • over, we need a way of resolving conflicting claims and re­ covering lost meanings. • • --xxviii-­ • One way to respond to this paradigmatic crisis is to set some initial logical and evidential canons for all those • who might wish to systematically review the evidence and en­ ter the debate in the future. Indeed, is this not the way of science--the special method by which we rise above the di­ visiveness of partisan rhetoric and endemic conflict to the • unities of dialectic? Only by agreeing upon ever-more rigor­ ous standards of logic and evidence can we hope to success­ fully resolve the cacophany of competing claims or refuta­ tions (eg. see Appendix). Paraphrasing Karl Popper (1963), • the growth of science is fundamentally structured in terms of claims and refutations, ascending through ever-more rig­ orous agreed-upon rules or canons for resolving conflict. Without such norms, the ascent of science is impossible. The • very cumulative nature of science itself, in contrast to other cultural forms, lies precisely in these mutually a­ greed-upon norms--namely, that all parties to the debate agree on constantly "raising the ante" to ever-higher lev­ • els of precision and comprehensiveness of evidence and log­ ical principle. In this spirit, I suggest several cautions at the outset. The following conventional errors in interpreting • Durkheim's typology of suicide simply will no longer do: they should be set aside once and for all. Anomie cannot ,­ simply be equated with "normlessness" (whatever that means, precisely), nor with structural-cultural "malintegration," nor with "strain in the relational system of society," nor with 'alienation" or a feeling of lostness, generalized des­ pair, or a host of other negative "states of mind." Anomie • cannot be simply collapsed into such broad categories as "social disorganization," "lack of structural integration," or even "lack of social participation." (On all this, see Appendix) • • In addition, egoisme cannot be ignored, nor rendered virtuous, ala Parsons. Egoisme and anomie cannot justifiably bell d' ..co apse 1nto one category, nor can anom1e and ego1sme be • • • • • • • • • I. • • --xxix-­ accurately located as two extremes on two continuums of in­ tegration--structural and normative. Nor can altruisme and fatalisme be ignored, or deprived of their prime historical referents. Such partial accounts mislead because they slight both Durkheim's doctrine of human nature as homo duplex, and his image of historical development. In all these ver­ sions, Durkheim's image of man as homo duplex--portraying the source of insatiable and egoistic passions as the organ­ ic ego, and his critical assessment of the broad, world­ historical processes transforming the basic relations be­ tween society, culture, and person--simply drop from view. In short, no transforming historical process, and no egoism and insatiability, no anomie or egoisme! General criteria for more adequate reinterpretation of Durkheim's underlying schema of suicide include the fol­ lowing: (1) Specify the source of egoism and insatiability-­ what are the origins of these destructive forces? Further, Durkheim's doctrine of man as homo duelex --presuming the inherent egoism and insatiahil1ty of the pre-social ego--should be critically review­ ed~ (2) Durkheim's evolutionary framework--reconstructed typologies should be based upon his social evolu­ tionary framework, not abstracted or formalistic schemas. Specifically, new typologies should con­ tain comparisons of the dominant "ideal types" of morality, and the types of suicide associated with them, at the two ends of history. (3) All four types--successful reconstructions should attempt to resolve the current impasse of "reduc­ tions" and "rescues" (see Part II, appendix) by simulta neously inter-relating the four types, yet maintaining their distinctness. In other words, a new typology should reveal both a fundamental unity and an empirical-historical diversity~ in short, the four types must be distinct, yet related. (4) Durkheim's critical or polemical thrust--new typol­ ogies should includelDurkheim's critical or polem­ ical thrust. Specifically, any adequate recon­ struction should be rooted in his polemic against opposing cultural traditions dominant in the modern world. • --xxx-­ • When beset by disorder, negation, breakdown, loss, we seek enlightenment as to their source and meaning. Our fundamental explanations of how things come to fall apart-­ in short, of how evil and suffering come to reign--once were called "theodicies," a term I wish to retrieve for this dis­ sertation. What, then, was Durkheim's basic theodicy? • The problem of locating the source of egoism and in­ satiability--le mal ~'infini--is central to Durkheim's sche­ mas of suicide. In his first schema, Durkheim grounded ego­ istic individualism and insatiable desires in the pre-social half of human nature--the organic ego. Indeed, this doctrine of the dualism of human nature (homo duplex)--the generic \ opposition between ego and person, between sensual appetites and moral rules, between percepts and concepts--lies at the • very heart of Durkheim's sociological method, his sociology of religion and morality, and his sociology of knowledge. However, I propose that Durkheim's early image of the eruption of egoistic and insatiable passions breaking through • J the restraining moral discipline of sociocultural rules was a mistake rhetorically, biologically, sociologically, his­ torically, and culturally (see Part I, Book Three). Indeed, • Durkheim himself later shifted away from the "anomie" ego to the "alogic" ego; thus, instead of assigning the presence of self-destructive desires to the generic ego, Durkheim came to merely impute to it the inherent absence of univer­ • salizable moral rules and rational concepts. Moreover, as • we shall discover in Book Two, at various points Durkheim also suggested that egoism and insatiability derive as much from the presence of modern cultural sanctions as from the " absence of traditional moral controls over the pre-social ego in the modern world. This reversal of the presence/ab­ sence polarity is crucial to reformulation of the first schema of suicide. • Which theodicy, then, shall we pursue? Shall we ac­ cept the notion, as I have done, that anchors our vices in deformed virtues? Or shall we, as Durkheim's first schema • • --xxxi-­ does, anchor our vices primarily in the organic ego? In this case, shall we then implicitly accept the underlying release/ • control continuum (eg. see P. Rieff, 1966)? Shall we then al­ so accept the telling of history as either the growth or re­ cession of repressive moral controls over the ego? If so, shall we then take up our stand in terms of the resulting • symbolic alignments--namely, advocating release of the natu­ ral harmonies of the ego means liberal, while control becomes conservative and archaic? As for myself, since I am inclined neither to demonize nor apotheosize the organic ego, I cannot • stand on either the liberal or the conservative end of this traditional continuum. Rather, I shall follow Durkheim's occasional insight that "every form of suicide is merely the exaggerated or de­ • flected form of a virtue." I propose, therefore, that it is, fundamentally, not our lapse from rules--not our lowest ani­ mal instincts--which leads us into trouble; it is not the lowest in us but the highest in us which leads to our own • undoing. Perhaps my own conscientiousness in following out all the twists and turns in Durkheim's changing schemas might serve as a case in point. The structure of my argu­ • ment, then, like Weber's in The Protestant Ethic ••• is i­ ronic. My essential theodicy is that our virtues, when push­ • ed to extreme, metamorphose or invert themselves and become our leading vices. In one sense, then, this dissertation may be read as a systematic search through Durkheim's work for evidence of a largely unnoticed but powerful break away from • the release/control tradition of thought to a fully socio­ cultural position, and a profoundly dialectical, ironic, or dramatic insight into the structure of human action based on another, older tradition of the "golden mean." For the ultimate key to anomie and egoisme lies not, as in the first schema, in the release of the inherently insatiable appetites of the organic ego in the mOder..n tran- ~ \\ • .. • sitional crisis. Rather, it is found, as Parsons, ~e~h, ~l~ and others have repeatedly observed, not in the recession _. • --xxxii-­ of medieval systems of moral control but rather in the in­ ternalization of new and different systems of moral author­ • ity in the Protestant Era. Hence, the modern crisis, repre­ sented by egoisme and anomie, is not so much the result of the release of the floods of passion inherent in the organic ego as the ironic or unanticipated consequences of the de­ • formation of extreme systems of moral control. Let me briefly explain the logical structure of the two schemas presented here. • Now, a systematic search through the vast literature on anomie (see Appendix) reveals many different ways of schematically arranging Durkheim's typology of suicide. How­ ever, each schema rests on reinterpretation of one of sever­ • al of Durkheim's underlying premises. Since I shall system­ atically criticize each of the major reconstructed typolo­ \ gies (see Appendix), let me first indicate the underlying logical structure of the two schemas of suicide which anchor • and inform this dissertation. Perhaps the simplest articulation of Durkheim's first typology is the following schema: • Figure 1. Suicidal Type • Although a Contemporary Crisis/Mechanical Solidarity egoisme / altruisme anomie / fatalisme heuristic point of departure for us as well as • for Durkheim, such a schema is evidently incomplete. One wishes to know, for example, what are the mediating causes of suicide and of our crisis? Hence, one is forced to in­ troduce several other analytical dimensions. I have not fol­ lowed the usual procedure of distinguishing between integra­ tion and regulation, as I believe this distinction to be • misleading by itself without the underlying image of man as homo duplex. Now, I have arranged my schemas in a different format • ---- ------------- --- '. I --xxxiii-­ than commonly utilized; I feel no c~mpulsion to utilize a simple four-fold table, for instance. Rather, I prefer to • attempt to precisely distinguish the multiple mediations and sub-categories in several dimensions. Thus, the overall structure of the schemas is a series of descending polar axes which overlap, and through several mediations, generate • the four suicidal types. In one sense, then, the hermeneuti­ cal task is, through systematic exegesis, to infer back from the four types to their underlying logical structure (a pro­ cedure which Durkheim himself said he used in Suicide). • Hence, we shall outline a series of compounding polarities until we reach the four suicidal types. For example, in Durkheim's first schema the first and most basic axis is Durkheim's doctrine of homo duplex paired • with sociocultural evolution. Thus, as graphically presented in Figure 2, Axis Ia represents the generic desires of the organic ego on the vertical dimension coupled with sociocul­ tural evolution on the horizontal dimension. In turn, the • second Axis subdivides into two more sets of polar categor­ ies--namely, Axis IIa represents Control or Release of the generic desires of the organic ego, while Axis lIb splits into Mechanical Solidarity and the Contemporary Transitional • Crisis as the two poles on the continuum of sociocultural evolution. At the same level, the Future represents a new kind of org~nic solidarity reached through the national en­ franchisement of corporations (see Part II, Book Two), which results in harmony restored through the "golden mean;" it• . represents the cessation or overcoming of anomic and egois­ tic passions. A third, and fina~ mediating level is added under Control and Release--namely, active/passive orienta­ • tions, which may be mirrored on the corresponding horizontal dimension by collective versus self, or outside versus in­ side, orientations. To sum up, we arrive at altruisme when the generic • desires of the organic ego in mechanical solidarity are controlled and redirected in an active, collective manner; • • --xxxiv-­ fatalisme in a passive, inward turning manner. Further, in • the first schema, anomie occurs when the generic desires of '. the organic ego are released in the modern transitional cri.­ sis; egoisme is the same situation except that it is expres­ sed in a passive, introverted manner. The other two possible categories are, of course, historically null. In the same manner, in my reconstruction of Durkheim's • second schema of suicide, the first and most basic axis com­ bines the generic power of cultural sanctions with sociocul­ tural evolution. On the second axis, IIa represents Mechani­ • cal Solidarity (traditional societies), while lIb represents the Modern Transitional Crisis (pre-Organic Solidarity). AxisII£represents the cornmon cultural content of Mechanical Solidarity--namely, Absolutizing Collectivism and the Tradi­ • tional Social Schedule of Satisfaction, which, when expres­ sed in active and passive forms, generates, finally, altru­ isme and fatalisrne, respectively. Correspondingly, Axis lIb --the Modern Transitional Crisis--is followed by Axis IIIb where the cornmon cultural content of the modern era--Abso­ lutizing Individualism and Legitimized Insatiability--is mediated successively through different cultural traditions • reaching different suicidal expressions in anomie and ego­ isme (see Figure 3.) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Figure 2. Durkheim's Axis lIb. Mechanical Solidarity Axis lb. Sociocultural Evolution Contemporary Transitional Crisis The Future: Organic Solidarity via Corporations --xxxv-­ First Schema Axis Ia. Homo Duplex (generic desires of organic ego) Axis IIa. Control Release Axis IlIa. Active/Passive Active/Passive Altruisme/Fatalisme Anomie/Egoisme "The Golden Mean" • • • • • • • • • • - - Figure 3. Durkheim's Second Schema: Suicide Caused by the Presence of Cultural Sanctions Axis I: The Generic Power of Cultural Sanctions (a) in sociocultural Evolution (b) Axis IIa: Mechanical Solidarity (Traditional Societies) Axis IlIa: Absolutizing Collectivism and a. Common Cultural The Traditional Social Schedule of satisfactionContent b. Different Modes Active ~ Passiveof Expression Axis IVa: Dominant Altruisme Fatalisme Suicidal Types Axis lIb: The Modern Transitional Crisis Axis IIIb: Absolutizing Individualism and a. Common Cultural Legitimized InsatiabilityContent b. Different Cultural Anglo Cultural Tradition Romantic Cultural TraditionTraditions c. Different Modes Active, External Passive, Internal of Expression "The Infinity of Desires" "The Infinity of Dreams" • Axis IVb: Dominant Suicidal Types Anomie Egoisme II ~ ~ ~ Axis IIc: The Future: Organic Solidarity via Cultural Shifts <: .... IThe "Golden Mean" I • --xxxvii-­ How shall we explain the origins of, and continuing sanctions for, an~ie and egoisme in the modern world? It • was this haunting question which first drove:me to attempt to anchor these modern forms of suicide in these series of mediating contexts; for I was dissatisfied with other's schemas and my own first formulations. Indeed, my attempts' • to anchor anomie and egoisme in better explanatory contexts \ went through at least three distinct stages. Once having recognized that anomie and egoisme were \ culturally sanctioned, and having seen absolute individual-I • ism and insatiability as keys to these types, I first began I to try to anchor anomie and egoisme in the modern world conceived as a unitary period. This is a common procedure: to portray the structure of the modern world as radically • different from preceding eras, and to couch these differen­ ces in terms of such basic shifts as those from community to society, the attenuation of the social bond, and the re­ sulting atomism, pluralism, market capitalism, rationalis­ • tic science, destructive technology, and so forth. However, while true to a certain extent, all of these revolutionary shifts failed to truly illuminate, for by an­ choring change in a unitary period, it seemed all one need • do was to locate the crucial shifts in time, and once one entered the door, all changed. Such an explanation was too global, it lacked specificity. Further, it was not really sociocultural, for it was hard to locate groups-in-process, • to determine their shifting rhetorical claims and counter­ claims. And, besides, it was too close to Durkheim's first schema, since these shifts were primarily viewed as nega­ tive devolutions. • A second approach which emerged out of my dissatis­ faction with the period approach was to pursue specific themes over time. Thus, I came to pose the basic problem in terms of the sociocultural origins, development, and im­ • pact of: (a) Individualism, nominalism, atomism, etc., and (b) Ideas of progress, time, future orientations, etc., and • I • --xxxviii-­ • (c) Drives toward perfection, infinite striving toward the ideal, and so on. The notion here was to try to compare and • contrast these ideas with the second schema of anomie and egoisme, and then attempt to trace the historical genealo­ gies connecting earlier notions to modern ideas and moral sanctions. I began to canvass Western history and, then, in­ • deed, all of human history for similar notions of, and sanc­ tions for, individualism and drives for progress and perfec­ tion. While it was fascinating reading many great thinkers, this tracing of different notions of the Self and the mean­ • ing of the Individual, and of time, infinity, drives for progress and perfection, and so on, soon confused rather than clarified the issue; the specific outlines of my own project began to fade. The limitation of all such thematic • or history of ideas approaches then became evident--they simply lacked sufficient sociocultural anchors. While better than the simple unitary approach in that one pursued speci­ fic themes across time periods, nonetheless, this interpre­ tive perspective suffered from a certain disembodied, ab­ stracted character. Were these real traditions, for in­ stance, or merely "s treams" of thought in which people in­ • dependently assumed similar positions, without dialogue or • reference? Were these traditions merely verbal construc­ tions of the investigator? And, most importantly, were these ideas or streams of morality and thought related to the ac­ tual rhetorical contexts, the lived frames of reference, • the actual "logics-in-use" of different groups at different times? Thereafter, an interesting dialectic emerged. On the one hand, my drive to anchor anomie and egoisme in their generative contexts led me to seek a new level of cultural and historical specificity--namely, cultural traditions. Because it combines the notion of culture as a symbolic • meaning and directive system of a group and the notion of tradition and historical process, the synthetic interpre­ tive perspective of cultural traditions reaches both the • , • --xxxix-­ • necessary level of cultural-historical specificity and of­ fers a new and generalizable perspective for the human sci­ ences. • Now, culture is the key to tradition, and religion is the key to culture. Hence, when we seek the origins, devel­ opment, and continuing sanctions for absolutizing indivi­ • dualism and legitimized insatiabilities in the modern world, we look to the interface between religion and culture. Here we ask: what are the prime terms of translation between mod­ ern religions and contemporary culture and psyche, especial­ ly anomie and egoisme? Thus, we shall explore whether, and to what extent, various ethical sanctions coming from Pro­ testantism have become sedimented at the heart of modern structures of conscience and consciousness? • Specifically, in the concluding chapter to Book One we shall link the cultural sanctioning of modern individualism with two contemporary cultural traditions. In Book Two, we shall explore the problematic relations between Protestant­ ism and suicide. In Book Three we shall connect anomie and egoisme as absolutized forms of individualism and legitimi­ zed insatiabilities to two dominant modern cultural tradi­ • tions. Thus, having argued that Durkheim's four types of • suicide must be addressed in historical terms, we cannot leave the foundations of anomie and egoisme floating in his­ torical space. How, then, did it come to be that anomie and egoisme were (are) culturally sanctioned? What are the mor­ • al, spiritual, and intellectual foundations of the Utilitar­ ian Ethos and the Romantic Ethos? Having linked anomie and egoisme in the second schema to modern cultural traditions, at the very end of this dis­ sertation we shall briefly move to link modern cultural traditions, in turn, to religions--to two versions of the Protestant Ethos; that is, anomie to the secularization of • Calvinism, and egoisme to the secularization of Lutheran­ ism. In short, we shall finally propose the following es­ sential cultural-historical linkages. As the active extern­ • • --xl-­ alization of absolute individualism and legitimate insatia­ bility, anomie is connected with the Anglo Utilitarian Cul­ • tural Tradition, and this is linked, in turn, with the Cal­ vinistic Ethos of inner-worldly asceticism as its original and continuing source. Further, as the "infinity of dreams" seen, for instance, in the modern artists' anguished "jour­ • ney into the interior," egoisme is linked with the Romantic­ Idealistic Cultural Tradition as its prime carrier, and, then, ultimately, with the Lutheran's and spiritual radicals' ethos of inner-worldly mysticism as its original and contin­ • uing source. • Finally, it may be of interest to note the signifi­ cance of one other shift which the modern cultural sanction­ ing of anomie and egoisme necessitates in Durkheim's proces­ sual image of breakdown and breakthrough. Now, clearly in the first schema (see Book Two), Durkheim conceived suicide • as a process involving, first, the breakdown of traditional social control, and second, the breakthrough of the direc­ tionless and proportionless passions of the pre-social ego. Even here the structural factor which most sociologists have taken as the decisive element of a sociological explan­ • ation of suicide--namely, the breakdown of social integra­ tion or regulation--was not considered by Durkheim himself to be the critical factor. Rather, social breakdown acted merely as the releasing and sustaining condition of the in­ , I satiable and self-centered passions of the organic ego. • " • Hence, in his first schema, Durkheim's central concern was not so much the breakdown of norms as with the breakthrough of an "infinity of dreams and desires." The weakening hold of the collective discipline of traditional norms acted here merely as the releasing and sustaining condition of this egocentric insatiability. In sum, in the first schema Durkheim posited a two-step process, in which the breakdown • of moral control preceded a breakthrough or release of the insatiable desires of the organic ego. However, in the second schema, the sequence of this • • ~-xli-- • two-step process is reversed. Because "every form of suicide is merely the exaggerated or deflected form of a virtue," and, therefor~, because of the cultural sanctioning of abso­ • lute individualism and the "longing for infinity" in the modern world, we shall posit, first, a breakthrough in the dominant systems of morality, and then a breakdown of those structures. For example, first we see appearing the Weberian • notion of the "New Model Man," the "visible saints" of as­ cetic and mystical Protestantism breaking forth from the medieval cloister to master self, society, and world for God's greater glory. Indeed, it was this unprecedented, mas­ • sive, and sustained breakthrough to "inner-light," "inner­ worldly mysticisms and asceticisms" which produced the mod­ ern moral cosmos. Only after the secularization of these new moral sanctions do we encounter, as an unanticipated and ex­ • • treme consequence, Durkheim's isolated and seemingly "amoral action" on a large scale in anomie and egoisme. Hence, the theodicy underlying Durkheim's first schema is limited only tq the latter, derivative process. Thus, the shift in the absence/presence polarity in locating egoism and insatiabil­ ity implies, correspondingly, a reversal in the two-step process causing anomie and egoisme. Specifically, since the • moral positions underlying anomie and egoisme are culturally sanctioned, in the second schema we posit, first, a moral breakthrough and then, second, a breakdown or deformation of this new system of moral direction. In sum, absence/pres­ ence, breakdown/breakthrough--it is Durkheim's double shift on these key rhetorical axes which constitutes the inner tension of this dissertation. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • --xlii-­ Before we begin, it is important to point out what lies beyond the scope of even this massive dissertation. Despite their evident interest, the reader will not find the following topics addressed here: (a) an exploration of the roots, especially the Greek classical roots, of Durkheim's notion of anomie, nor of the classical-Christian notion of limits, of human finitude, of gradation and balance, or of the "golden mean" (but see for the latter H. Hadyn, 1950). (b) a review of all of Durkheim's work, a summary of all his major books, for instance, or even an in-depth treatment of his whole methodological and substantive doctrine; it must be emphasized that even in Book One ! shall treat only of those central parts of Durkheim's substantive doctrine that relate to the schemas of suicide; (c) detailed tracing of all the intellectual or cultural influences on Durkheim's work or life; this is far too complex a problem to be addressed here (but see Lukes, 1973); (d) detailed investigation of the phenomenon of suicide per se, nor background on suicide studies, nor concern with the tradition of moral statistics; (e) systematic explorations of the psychodynamics of ano­ mie and egoisme; (f) systematic histories of the development of the modern cultural traditions sanctioning anomie and egoisme. Further, the reader is alerted to the following dis­ tinctions. iVhen I use the word egoism, I shall refer to the organic ego, but when it use the term egoisme I shall refer to Durkheim's suicidal type. Moreover, to recall their dis­ tinctive connotations, I have retained the French expressions to refer to Durkheim's four suicidal types--namely, altruisme and fatalisme, anomie and egoisme. In addition, the reader is alerted to the following conventions adopted here. Asterisks at the end of a quote mean that I have added underlining to emphasize significant parts of a passage. • --xliii-­ • • • • • • • • Moreover, to simplify citation, the following abbre­ viations of the titles of Durkheim's major works shall be a­ dopted: S for Suicide, DL for The Division of Labor in Socie­ ty, EF for The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, R for The Rules of Sociological Method, ME for Moral Education, PC for Primitive Classification, SP for Sociology and Philoso­ phy, PECM for Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, Soc for Socialism, PE for "Two Laws of Penal Evolution," and DHN for "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions." Other articles and notes by Durkheim are indicated by year of publi­ cation, and may be found entered in this format under the ap­ propriate bibliography entry. Footnotes are recorded in terms of their sequence on each page (eg. #2, page 200), and will be found at the end of each book. Finally, a few words of appreciation for those who helped me on my way. First, the kindness of my departmental chair at Seattle University, Father James G. Goodwin, S.J., and the small grant to help defray the costs of reproducing this manuscript are greatly appreciated. In addition, I should like to acknowledge the support and guidance offered by three of my late teachers and friends. From Benjamin Nel­ son I first learned to appreciate the full power and signifi­ cance of Weber's and Durkheim's life-work; also I found in Nelson's own work a learned and compelling example of an in­ depth interpretation of the evolution of Western society, culture, and psyche. After I had begun my research into Durk­ heim, I was grateful for the warm support and mature guidance extended to this neophyte Durkheimian by two old masters-­ Harry Alpert and Jack Foskett. Even though they shall not be here to see this task completed, their help and trust was invaluable. I also wish to thank the other members of my com­ mittee, Dick Hill and Stan Pierson from History, for their support and helpful suggestions. In my dissertation director, Ben Johnson, I was for­ tunate to find a good and wise man, blessed with insight, • --xliv-­ tact, fine editorial sense, and displaying unflagging person­ al support and confidence in me. He is one of three people • without whom I could never have begun, much less finished, • ---------- ··s uch--an- ·arduous-ta sk;--------------------------------------- .. -.--.-.--.------.----­ Finally, I wish to thank my mother, who provided not only room to work and helped purchase an IBM typewriter so that I could type this oversize dissertation myself, but also offered encouragement in every way possible, as did my wife, who provided invaluable aid by proofreading the entire manu­ • script, helping support our family, and putting up with my "burden." Their creative fidelity truly makes this work "our" achievement. • New York Eugene Berkeley Seattle, 1970-1978 David D. McCloskey • • • • • • • -.,..1-­ • BOOK ONE • THE "NUCLEAH STRUCTURE" OF DURKHEIM'S WORK • "Si vous voulez murir votre TJens~e, attachez-vous a l'etude scrupuleuse d'un grand maitre; demontez syst~me dans ses rouages les plus secrets." (Emile Durkheim) Synopsis. We shall explore the foundational or "nuclear structure" informing all of Durkheim's substantive work in • two phases. In the first section, we shall focus on his key generic premises, while in the second section we shall fo­ cus on his key genetic-evolutionary premises. Our explora­ tion will be sequential in that each succeeding chapter will • amplify the central thrust of the preceding one. Hence, we shall progressively develop the generic sociocultural foun­ dation and the evolutionary trajectory informing all of Durkheim's work, especially as these relate to his schernas • of suicide. In Part I, we shall first briefly explore Durkheim's penchant for addressing problems in terms of polarities, and his attempts to overcome such dichotomies through the • dialectical mediums of sociocultural process and evolution­ ary progress. In Chapter Two, we shall unfold the basic di­ chotomy informing Durkheim's sociologies of morality, know­ ledge and religion--namely, homo duplex. Here Durkheim op­ • posed the insatiable sensual appetites of the organic ego to the moral rules and intellectual concepts coming from society. Thus, Durkheim identified the moral and logical with the social. However, not only shall we offer a few pre­ • liminary criticisms of Durkheim's doctrine of man as homo duplex (amplified in Part I, Book Three), but we also note • • • • • • • • • .­ --2-.­ that Durkheim later shifted from the anomic to the alogic ego. This shift opens the way for the move from schema number one to schema number two--that is, the ego can then no longer be considered the negative source of the destructive "infini­ ty of dreams and desires" seen in anomie and egoisme. In Chapter Three we shall explore the most important half of Durkheim's homo duplex dichotomy--the sociocultural construction of the person in terms of structures of con­ cience and consciousness. In Durkheim's basic sociocultural theory, the logics of moral decision and the moralities of intellectual judgment are always and everywhere intertwined. Next, we shall explore in detail how Durkheim specifi­ cally anchored the emerging relations between structures of conscience and consciousness by linking them to the fundamen­ tal structure and process of collectivities. Thus, in Chap­ ter Four, we shall explore Durkheim's causal model which al­ ways anchored social facts in social processes. Here Durk­ heim posited a two-story causal model in which superstructur­ al collectively representational (symbolic) processes were intimately linked with substructural social morphological processes. The prime link between the "material lower-story" and the "ideal upper-story" was "moral or dynamic density." Our attention here shall be directed primarily toward the collectively representational level, because in his later work Durkheim's thought moved increasingly toward symbolic processes and the autonomization of collective representa­ tions. Some key sequential linkages by which collective sym­ bols emerge out of social morphological process include: (I) Social morphological implosions moralize organic egos in creating societies and persons~ (2) Cultural implosions thereby lift man above the con­ fines of the organic ego~ social energies lift us into the realm of freedom, of moral rules and in­ tellectual concepts; (3) Symbols act as visible, public collective represen­ tations of group self-consciousness. Due to the mor­ al intensities which created them, some symbols be­ • • • • • • • • • • • --3-­ come "sacralized"--invested with obligatory respect and desirability; (4) Because moral intensities inevitably fade and "sa­ cred symbols" become depreciated, periodic renewals are necessary to reaffirm the social bond and to re­ vitalize the structures of conscience and conscious­ ness; (5) The marked contrast between these two alternating phases of sociocultural life creates the opposition between the "sacred" and the "profane." These basic oppositions create tension in the sociocultural and phenomenological fields, and life becomes progres­ sively energized and organized by these two poles; (6) Inevitably the organizing tension between sacred and profane is extended to all spheres of reality and levels of experience. The world is cosmicized through a compounding series of symbolic equations. Phenomenological analogies serve as bridges trans­ forming empirical diversity into moral and concep­ tual unity; (7) Tension is resolved, and the powers of imagination and will reorganized and released, through a crucial transformation of the oppositions into a new and higher synthetic unity. Thus, sociocultural process in its symbolic dimension has an inherently dialec­ tical or dramatic structure. In Part II, we shall explore four key facets of Durk­ heim's genetic-evolutionary theory. It is important, however, to first understand how it was that Durkheim's causal model led him to always return to the simplest case, the clearest example of necessary connection between the "material" and "ideal" halves of society. For in fusing his generic and genetic-evolutionary investigations into the nature and de­ velopment of human society and culture, Durkheirn sought to discover a paradigmatic situation, a prime case-study, for a crucial experiment in which there would be a one-to-one correspondence between symbolic forms and social forms, be­ tween the social morphological substratum and the social physiological or symbolic superstructure. Where collective symbols are deeply fused with the fundamental structures of the group, Durkheim believed he had discovered the "monocel­ lular" form of sociocultural life, the template, from which all complex sociocultural forms evolved. As Lukes observes, • • --4-- Durkheim held it as axiomatic that there is an identity be­ • tween sociocultural simplicity and evolutionary priority. Hence, only in terms of the most "elementary" forms did Durk­ heim believe that he could surely discover generic socio­ cultural processes directly and unmistakably fused with gen­ • etic-evolutionary processes. In Chapter Five, then, we shall explore Durkheim's guiding metaphor of the evolutionary tree of social life. For all of his work was grounded in this genetic and evolution­ • ary framework. The trunk of the tree corresponds to the in­ variant conditions of social and cultural life, while the branches represent different types of societies. Durkheim's metaphor thus combined both evolutionary continuity (the • roots and the trunk) and discontinuity and diversity (the branches and fruits). In Chapter Six we shall explore Durkheim's seminal no­ tion that the primitive sacral complex served as the prime • evolutionary womb of society and culture. Elementary cultural forms are: (a) socio-centric, and (b) governed by sacro-magi­ cal rationales and ritual etiquettes. Thus, the first founda­ tions of legitimate moral and intellectual authority are • grounded in the group and its religion; in the beginning, they are all fused together. The double historical signifi­ cance of the primitive sacral complex is that it both served as the creative womb of human culture and as an obstacle to • progressive cultural evolution. Thus, the transition from simple, sacral societies to complex, secular societies forms the mainline of Durkheim's evolutionary concerns. In Chapter Seven, we shall explore Durkheim's neglect­ • ed sociology of civilizational process. For as societies e­ volve, so too do their prime symbolic guidance systems. The close parallel on the macro-evolutionary level between social morphological differentiation and symbolic differentiation • implies the transition from concrete to abstract symbolism, from parochial or tribal to universal representations, from the fused embeddedness of symbols in the primitive sacral • • • • • • • • • • --5 ..... ­ complex to the differentiated autonomy of symbols, institu­ tional spheres, and persons. The inner key to the progres­ sive evolution of societies and their symbolic guidance sys­ tems is the link between widening structures of fraterniza­ tion and rationalization in the grounds of moral and intel­ lectual discourse. In sum, civilizations emerge through the progressive extension of social bonds which, in turn, require universalizable symbolic forms. Finally, in Chapter Eight we shall explore Durkheim's notion of the evolution of the person through history. Durk­ heim portrayed the individual as part of two opposite social conditions at the two ends of history. In primitive socie­ ties, the individual's sense of self is submerged in the group, and permeated by the fused sacro-magical collective conscience. Now, there are two different, yet complementary, lines Durkheim pursued to explain the emergence of the indi­ vidual out of archaic "mechanical solidarity." Early in his career, Durkheim equated societal differentiation with indi­ viduation. Thus, he asserted that the division of labor pro­ gressively frees the individual from the constraints of the repressive conscience collective. Here Durkheim was central­ ly concerned with the de-collectivization of structures of moral and intellectual responsibility. However, at this ear­ ly stage Durkheim neglected to distinguish between individua­ tion and personalization. By contrast, in his later work Durkheim took care to distinguish between these two processes, and emphasized the symbolic construction of the notion of the person. Hence, we discover here a double dialectic in the evolution of the person through history between individuation (de-collectivi­ zation and autonomization through separation) and phenomeno­ logical deepening and centering through more powerful cul­ tural sanctions. Thus, for example, far from being embedded in generic human nature, the modern cult of the morally au­ tonomous and intellectually responsible person is rather a critically significant sociocultural and historical construc­ • I I. I • • • • • • • • • • --6-­ tion. Finally, the emergence of the person through history finds its culmination in Durkheim's own religion of la per­ sonne humain, and in the Anglo and Romantic traditions' moral subsidy of the autonomous ego. At the same time, however (and this forms the link to the shifting schemas of suicide), acknowledgment of the extraordinarily strong modern cultural sanctions for individualism leads us to recognize that, like all cults which absolutize their prime values, this one, too, may ironically culminate in self-destructive extremes. • --7-­ • CHAPTER ONE • DICHOTOMIES AND DIALECTICS • Durkheim tried to avoid making a narrow doctrin­ aire choice between allegedly incompatible opposites. Rather, he strove to attain a new synthesis, a unity of opposites, a coincidentia oppositoru~whichwould provide a new level of analytic insight (Robert Bellah, 1973:xxi). • Perhaps the most characteristic and revealing hallmark of Durkheim's doctrine is the series of "root dichotomies" permeating his thought. This compounding system of "binary oppositions" provided Durkheim with key analytical anchors as he progressively unfolded his thought. Correspondingly, they may serve us as interpretive keys in our attempt to • systematically comprehend the substantive "nuclear struct­ ure" of Durkheim's thought. • Although various observers over the years have noted one or more aspects of these crucial underlying polarities, certainly Steven Lukes (1971, 1973) was the first to system­ atically present and analyze many of these dichotomies as key analytical series anchoring Durkheim's system of socio­ • logy. Some of the more significant pairs in Durkheim's com­ pounding binary system include: society/individual, object­ • ive/subjective, sociology/psychology, universals/variables, normal/pathological, science/mysticism, necessary/contingent, person/ego, concepts/sensations, moral rules/sensual appet­ ites, sacred/profane, and so on and so forth. • There is no need here to explore the details of this interrelated series of "root dichotomies," as Lukes calls them, for he has already fruitfully explored several of the more basic pairs. It is enough for our present purposes to simply ackno~edge this ever-proliferating series of polarities. • • • • • • • • • • • --8--- Lukes also explores various ambiguities and shifts in many of the more central polarities. Further, it is important to note that the contents of these dichotomous sets are not perfectly parallel, since the phenomena addressed by each differs. How­ ever, in each case the dichotomizing logic remains the same; and once one perceives the root logic operative in Durkheim's theorizing, it can easily be recognized that many of these d~chotomous pairs unfolded one out of the other. However, it is not sufficient to merely explore the ex­ istence of various Durkheimian dichotomies, nor even to re­ cognize the inner logic of his initial interpretive proce­ dure. For the "nuclear structure" of Durkheim's thought is inevitably distorted if portrayed simply as rhetorical or fa­ tally dichotomizing, for it was inherently dialectical as well. Poggi remarks, for example, how Durkheim always wished to move beyond the very oppositions which he himself had constructed: On close examination, these points seldom turn out to be tenable as dichotomies ... in the sense that the two elements do not lie on the same plane. Instead, one of them stands over the other and "envelops" it . ... In my view, these unacknowledged breakdowns of pur­ portedly crucial dichotomies express the urgency of Durkheim's moral passion for unity •.. (1972:252). While everyone has observed Durkheim's polemical points of departure, few have emphasized that Durkheim's penchant for root dichotomies served merely to heighten the dramatic con­ trasts between traditional antinomies which he then attemp­ ted to reconcile in terms of a higher (positivistic and so­ ciologistic) synthesis. It is almost as if Durkheim drew such sharp distinctions primarily to heighten the drama of his equally characteristic attempt to dialectically resolve these traditional opposites. Fortunately, the current renaissance of Durkheim stu­ dies has recovered a sense of his higher dialectical ambi­ tions. In 1960, for instance, Hayward described the inner tensions in Durkheim's sociological thought in this way: Durkheim's social ohilosophy ..• has been described as "Kantianism reassessed and supplemented by Com­ • • • • • • • • • • • --9-­ tianism." Whilst ... it would be more accurate to char­ acterize it as an attempt to conciliate the neo-posi­ tivism and sociologism of Comte's predecessor, Saint­ Simon, with the neo-criticism and "juridism" of Kant's disciple, Renouvier, this affirmation is valuable in indicating the tension within Durkheim's doctrine be­ tween determinist and libertarian, holist and person­ alist, transcendental and immanentist tendencies which, throughout his work, he endeavored to resolve into a harmonious synthesis through the unrelenting applica­ tion of "conscience," i.e. a combination of analytical reason and imperative ethic (1960:19). Bellah (1973) also reveals a keen sense of the extent to which Durkheim strove constantly to transcend perennial polarities such as those between materialism and idealism, empiricism and rationalism, the individual and society,Gemeinschaft and Gesel­ Ischaft, and so on. Wallwork especially has emphasized the dia­ lectical character of Durkheim's thought. A second characteristic of Durkheim's method is the dialectical manner in which he approaches virtually every major philosophical and theoretical issue. As Henri Peyre rightly observes, "Durkheim was a master of dialectics" .... Durkheim invariably sets forth an­ tithetical views that are brilliantly criticized and seemingly discarded until they are joined, in a modi­ fied form, in his own unique synthesis .... Durkheim's frequent use of the dialectical method has unfortun­ ately passed unnoticed by most of his American inter­ preters (1972: 5-6). Wallwork also offers the following examples of some of the dialectical tensions inherent in Durkheim's thought, and thus, its paradoxical character. The paradoxical quality of Durkheim's social and polit­ ical thought derives from these and other dialectical resolutions. Man is of infinite worth, but this value is not inherent within him; it is but a supreme fiction created by society. Man is totally dependent upon so­ ciety for the qualities that make him human, yet so­ ciety has increasingly freed him from group tyranny. Man has become an "autonomus center of activity," yet secondary group restrictions, by preventing anomie, actually increase his liberty. Patriotism is a funda­ mental duty, yet patriotism must be counterbalanced by humanistic ends. For the ambiguities, lacuna, and errors in some of these paradoxical formulations, Durk­ heim has been justly criticized, but it is no longer justifiable to attribute to him conservative doctrines unqualified by the liberal, and occasionally radical, elements in his thought (1972:119; see also 136). • • --lO-~ Finally, LaCapra also noted Durkheim's dialectical • passion for transcending traditional polarities. • The truly basic philosophical tension in the thought of Durkheim was related to his rationalism. It invol­ ved his partial failure to transcend classical ration­ alism. Durkheim's thought was caught up in a tension between the narrowly analytical and the dialectical heritages transmitted to him through Renouvier .... One • might simplistically label the narrowly analytical ten­ dency of his thought a Cartesianized and socialied neo-Kantianism. The most obvious influence of neo-Kant­ ianism was in his passion for dualistic antinomies. The more profound influence, which led into his dialectical attempt to reconcile or at least relate antinomies, was his ultimate affirmation of a philosophy of finitude based upon a normative sense of limits (1972:8). LaCapra also remarks that: • Durkheim's broader rationalist dream was to transcend partisan ideological struggles and to forge a dialecti­ cal reonciliation of conservative, radical, and liberal traditions of thought (1972:18). • Like Marx, Durkheim tried to integrate a critique of political economy, German speculative philosophy, and the French socialist tradition in a comprehensive theory of the genesis and functioning of modern society (1972:23) . In sum, Durkheim's mode of conceptualizing always pro­ ceeded in a two-phase process. First, he set up mutually ex­ • clusive dichotomies, seemingly a radical contrasting of op­ posing claims to primacy in human action. It is this image of Durkheim as always radically polarizing primacy and vir­ tue to his own chosen side of his own dichotomy which so • often offends readers enjoying their first taste of one of his great works. Inevitably, however, deeper exegesis re­ veals that Durkheim always attempted to resolve the inherent oppositions which he himself had so sharply posed. Durkheim l. always sought, in positivistic and sociologistic terms, to• dialectically transcend traditional antinomies by generating J a new over-arching synthesis which all parties to the debate could embrace. Recognition of this two-step process of rad­ • ical dichotomization and polemics on multiple rhetorical fronts, and then resolution of these polarities in terms of an evolutionarily-won synthesis is a key to understanning • • --11-­ • Durkheim's conceptual and methodological structure and, in turn, his prime dialectical ambitions. • Without this necessary perception of the entire pro­ cess of the normal "logics-in-use" in Durkheim's thought, various elements can be lifted out of context, leaving each • man to "quote Scriptures" to his own purpose. As Lukes (1973) notes, there are many different and even contradictory "Durk­ heims" floating around in sociological space. As with ~leber, or indeed, with any great thinker, one may choose to empha­ • size one aspect of Durkheim's thought at the expense of ano­ ther, and one may find on almost any page convincing refuta­ tion from Durkheim himself against any such simple or narrow portrait. Perhaps this multiplicity o~ simu1tdneous inter­ • ests and perspectives can be seen to constitute one key to both great thinkers and the uncertain fate of their para­ digms. In turn, the same multiplicity can help to explain the subsequent diffusion, separation, and "routinization of charisma-on-deposit" (McCloskey,· 1974). For, often as not, by virtue of their ability to encompass ever-more diverse '. phenomena, paradigms almost necessarily become protean mod­ els, capable of eliciting myriad meanings. Might we not call this phase of the eternal dialectic of "merger and di­ vision" (Kenneth Burke, 1945) the "proteanization of para­ digms"? • • • --12-­• • CHAPTER TWO • HOMO DUPLEX: DURKHEIM'S DOCTRINE OF THE DUALISM OF HUMAN NATURE • The soul and the body, sensation and reason, ego­ istic appetites and moral will are opposed and, at the same time, mutually related, just as the sacred and the profane, which are forbidden to one another, nonetheless are forever intermingled ~Durkheim, in (Lukes, 1973:22). Preface. Almost the entire range of Durkheim's underlying • series of "roo~ dichotomies"--especially polarities such as society/individual, person/ego, moral rules/sensual appetites, conc~pts/sensations, public/private, sacred/profane--are sum­ med up in Durkheim's central image of the dualism of human na­ • ture. Steven Lukes rightly observes: This central, but ... multiple, dichotomy between the social and the individual is, in a sense, the keystone of Durkheim's entire system of thought. In particular, it can be seen as crucial to his sociology of morality, • his sociology of knowledge, and his sociology of reli­ gion, since it underlies the distinctions he drew be­ tween moral rules and sensual appetites, between con­ cepts and sensations, and between the sacred and the profane (1973:22). • Indeed, it can hardly be overemphasized that the image of man • as homo duplex lies at the very foundation of Durkheim's socio­ logies of morality, knowledge, and religion. As we shall dis­ cover, without this distinction between ego and person, and the characterization of the former as inherently egocentric, pas­ sionate, and even insatiable, Durkheim's theory of anomie and the need for constant moral discipline makes little sense. Since in Book Three we shall extensively criticize Durkheim's • doctrine of homo duplex, I merely wish here to document in out­ line the nature and development of this crucial doctrine . • • • • • • • • • • • -13-­ As a modern positivist moral philosopher working socio­ logically, Durkheim embraced the old image of man as homo du­ plex, but with a fundamentally new twist. Traditional Western and especially Christian moral philosophy portrayed man in his generic essence as representing a unique union between the opposing realms of matter and spirit--humankind was the link between heaven and earth. In Durkheim's system of posi­ tivist symbolic equations, this relation became translated as: ego is to person as body was to soul. Thus, Durkheim ful­ filled his commitments to both positivism and moral philoso­ phy by insisting that while man was, indeed, "double," it is society as the prime source of discipline and goals, of le­ getimate moral authority, impersonal public concepts, univer­ salizable rules, on the one hand, and the inherently egocen­ tric and privatized passions of the amoral, presocial indi­ vidual on the other, which constitute the two basic poles of human existence. We need not wander far to discover the cultural source from which Durkheim drew this doctrine of the duality of hu­ man nature. For Durkheim's own deep positivist cultural com­ mitments led him here to embrace and extend traditional Car­ tesian dualisms splitting into separate spheres self and world, mind and body, spirit and mechanism, and so on. Wall­ work has noted of ~his origin of Durkheim's doctrine: " ... the world of opjective facts was set against the realm of i­ deas and ideals, and matter was contrasted with spirit. These conflicts were essentially continuations of Cartesian dual­ ism" (1972:9). LaCapra also noted the Cartesian influence, adding that of Durkheim's neo-Kantian "passion for dualistic antinomies" (1972:8~ see also 285). The influence of Cartesianism was most obvious in Durk­ heim's reliance upon the antinomy between mind and mat­ ter. This antinomy was expressed in the idea of homo du­ plex--the dual nature of man--which was interpreted bY­ Durkheim in terms of the opposition between the organic and the social (1972:9) . Lukes also emphasizes the mutual reinforcement of Cartesian and neo-Kantian thought in the late nineteenth century as it • • --14-­ • • • • • • • • • infl uence1 Durkheim' s "passion for dichotomies." Durkheim's conception of human nature as dual invol­ ved ..• two parallel oppositions: between sensual ap­ petites and moral rules, and between sensations and concepts. The Kantian nature of this conception is un­ mistakable and corresponded to the predominant philo­ sophical ideas of the time, which he had absorbed, first through the major formative influence of Renou­ vier, and later from the more specifically epistemo­ logical thinking of Hamelin (1973:435). Through the fusion of Cartesian and neo-Kantian philosophical currents in his day, Durkheim's penchant for "root dichotomies" was deepened and reinforced. Finally, in a curious way, Durk­ heim's original Cartesian dualism was reinforced by the opposi­ tions between individual and society embraced by Utilitarians and Romantics (eg. from Rousseau on) alike. But as we shall dis­ cover, this negative polemical reinforcement of the split be­ tween individual and society embraced by his opponents led to the undoing of Durkheim's first schema of suicide (see Book Three) . It is rather strange that this absolutely critical an­ chor of Durkheim's theories has been so often slighted in secon­ dary accounts over the years. Besides Wallwork and LaCapra, Peristiany (1953:viii), Giddens (197lb:22l), Coser (1971:136), ~uglas (1967:343-4), Lukes (1973:432-3), and Nisbet (1974: 229) have recently begun to glimpse the centrality and signi­ ficance of this doctrine in Durkheim's work. However, one se­ condary account, perhaps slighted because it is out of print, puts the image of man as homo duplex at the very heart of Durk­ heim's doctrine. I refer, of course, to Edward Tiryakian's useful summary of Durkheim's seminal article "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions," in the former's Socio­ logism and Existentialism (1962). In sum, even though Durk­ heim's aforementioned article was translated and published in Kurt Wolff's 1960 collection of articles on Durkheim, and Ti­ ryakian usefully summarized Durkheim's thesis, it is still not generally perceived that the image of man as homo duplex is absolutely central to Durkheim's system. This blindness and discontinuity in terms of scientific development is most dis­ tressing. • • --l5';';~ If consideration of the ways in which various influences fused in Durkheim's central doctrine of the duality of human • nature is complex, when these multiple origins are coupled with Durkheim's ever-proliferating series of parallel dichot­ omies, we must stand ready to acknowledge not only the deep­ ening ramifications of his complex argument, but also various • shifts in the grounds of his argument. Thus, one may legiti­ mately begin, for instance, by asking: but why should the in­ dividual be necessarily considered amoral? And why should so­ ciety be portrayed as the sole source of goodness, authority, • and reason? One answer might be: because, in direct contrast to preceding metaphysical theories which endowed the indivi­ dual with cosmic or divine "essential" qualities, Durkheim in­ sisted that only "existential" or "positive" sources be admit­ • ted as relevant evidence. Further, in contrast to the dominant individualistic or nominalist theories o£ his day, Durkheim stripped the lone abstracted individual not only of existen­ tial priority, but also of corresponding qualities such as the • "inner light" of Reason, moral authority, and so on. Given his own negative incorporation of the hypothetical isolated ego-­ circumscribed by its own private passions--it is no wonder that Durkheim felt justified in assigning all the positive (in both • senses) qualities to human society and culture. Thus, to Durk­ heim, society is the only moral phenomenon in nat~re~ the in­ dividual ego is basically amoral. Morality, conversely, is pre­ eminently social; that is, not only is ita social construction, • but it pertains primarily to social obligation. In any case, while highly complex and synthetic arguments such as Durkheim's offer intrinsic fascination simply because of their rhetorical appeal, we should not be surprised that • such a "brittle synthesis," as Giddens (l97lb:222) terms it, by virtue of the inherently incompatible elements, represents a constant temptation to logical and empirical error (see Book Three). Despite his dialectical ingenuity, the binds Durkheim • unwittingly placed himself in unfortunately led him too far for us to fully embrace his doctrine. Indeed, given his commitments, , • • --16-­ and his aspiration to transcend all previous oppositions root­ ed in opposing cultural traditions, perhaps he had little • choice. As for us, forewarned is forearmed. Indeed, as~~et out on this journey to recapture the full depths of Durkheim's doctrine of the duality of human na­ ture, it is important to recognize that there is a crucial dif­ • , ference between the early and late installments of his views. \Vhile egocentricity represented a constant negative factor in both Durkheim's early and later notions of the duality of hu­ man nature, the origins and nature of this anomic or alogical • factor differed in these versions. In his early formulation, Durkheim grounded insatiability--the very absence of determin­ ate form and natural limit {the sine qua non-of morality)--in­ the dark desires of the unsocialized ego. However, toward the • end of his life Durkheim apparently grew more pessimistic, and attributed the source of the endemic incapacity of man to gain inner peace and satisfaction to the warring halves of human na­ ture. In addition, in the early image, the insatiable and ego­ • centric passions represent a darkly destructive, even chaotic, energetically expansive force, while in the later version the purely idiosyncratic ego represents an inward-turning, purely privatized existence, that can only be pulled from its local­ • ized orbit by the intense impersonal forces of society and cul­ ture. In the first installment of this crucial doctrine, the a-nomie of the amoral ego represented the active "contradict­ r ion of all morality" (DL:431); in other words, the nomos of • society and culture was actively opposed by the anti-nomian forces erupting up from the biological and psychological levels. In the later formulation, the relatively passive a-nomie or a-logic of the pre-socialized ego was opposed not so much to • nomos as to a universalizable logos. Although Durkheim's doc­ trine of "human finitude" (LaCapra, 1972) and his philosophy of health and well-being as the "golden mean" are closely rela­ ted themes, we shall consider them later in the second part • of Book Three. Let us now turn to consider the first install­ ment of Durkheim's doctrine of the dualism of human nature. • • --17-­ A. The Multiplicity of Meanings of the "Individual" in Durkheim'~ System of Sociology • Preface. At the outset, it is important to recognize some of the potential ambiguities emerging from the mounting resonances between Durkheim's root dichotomies and his seminal image of the dualism of human nature. These resonances are compounded • because Durkheim's thought moved here on both the generic and genetic-evolutionary levels, and because he assigned both posi­ tive and negative features to each half of the dichotomy on eaCh of these levels. Further, we shall discover critical shifts in • the grounds of argument, especially in regard to the question of the source of the seemingly constitutional inability of man­ kind to attain inner peace and lasting satisfaction. While he originally grounded insatiability in the pre-socialized ego, • • Durkheim later argued that the suffering inherent in the human condition derives instead from the impossibility of simultan­ eously satisfying both halves of human nature. Whereas the ear­ lier notion required over-coming the darkly destructive pas­ • sions of the isolated ego, Durkheim's later doctrine grew in­ creasingly pessimistic, viewing the warring halves of human nature as the endemic dis-ease of the human condition. Let us now attempt to briefly sort out some of these important dis­ • tinctions between different Durkheimian meanings of that cru­ cial term the "Individual." 1. Generic Versus Genetic-Evolutionary Meanings of the • "Individual" • We might begin by recalling that the long-standing cri­ tique of Durkheim as a kind of Platonizing metaphysician of so­ ciety--an extreme hypostatizing social realist--persists in the still popular rendering of Durkheim as stridently anti-indivi­ dualist. However, as Anthony Giddens rightly insists in his ex­ cellent article "The Individual in the Writings of Emile Durk­ • heim" : most secondary interpreters of Durkheim have fail­ ed to connect his analytical discussion 'and rejection) of individualism as a methodological approach to social • 8 • --18-­ theory with his developmental conception of the emer­ gence of individualism as a morality brought into be­ • ing by the growth of the differentiated division of labor (1971b:210). This is a very important distinctioniindeed, the misleading, but still pervasive, image of Durkheim as anti-individualist must now give way to more subtly inflected distinctions drawn • between the various meanings assigned by Durkheim to the term "individual" on both the generic and genetic-evolutionary le­ vels. Let us now briefly explore these different connotations. Steven Lukes provides the following useful guide to • untangling the multiplicity of meanings of "individual": By the 'individual,' Durkheim meant sometimes the (pre-social) individual seen as a biologically given, organic unit, sometimes the (abstract) individual seen as possessing certain invariant properties (eg. Util­ • itarian or economic man), sometimes the (extra-social) individual isolated from human association, and some­ times the real, concrete individual person, living in society--not to mention a further sense in which the 'individual' refers to a socially-determined concep­ tion of the human person in general (as in the 'reli­ • gion of the individual,' which is the 'product of so­ ciety itself,' in which the 'individual' becomes a sacred object (1973 :21-2) . III his valuable 1971(b) article, Giddens adds that Durkheim placed two different valuations 'Jnthe "individual"on two dif­ • ferent levels. On the abstract, ~eneric, universal level, Durk­ heim regarded the pre-socialized individual (eg. the child) as the negative carrier of insatiable and egoistic passions, or, at the very least, as the locus of privatized passions. • On the same level, he portrayed society, by contrast, as the source of moral discipline, legitimate authority, reason, con­ cepts, universalizable rules, and so on. However, on the his­ torical level, Durkheim portrayed the individual as part of • two opposite social conditions at the two ends of human his­ tory. In primitive societies, the individual's sense of self is necessarily submerged in the group; it is permeated by the fused sacral-magical collective conscience. In evolutionary • terms, therefore, what we witness is the progressive awaken­ ing of the structures of conscience and consciousness, of the emergence of the individual, or rather the person, through his­ • ....------------------------­ • • • • I. • • • • • --19-­ tory. Individual autonomy progressively emerges through soci­ etal differentiation. Far from being embedded in generic hu­ man nature, the modern cult of the morally autonomous and in­ tellectually responsible person is a crucial historical and social construction. But how could the individual be at one and the same time considered basically amoral and the evolu­ tionary object and expression of a higher morality? No real paradox arises, however, since Durkheirn's phi­ losophical notion of the pre-socialized human ego was couch­ ed on the generic organic level, while, on the contrary, his notion of moral individualism as a sociocultural emergent was cast on the evolutionary level (see Chapter Eight of this Book). The first image represents a generic and destructive given,while the second concerns the construction of the au­ tonomous conscience and consciousness as the preeminent value of the modern world. In short, the difference is between the generic ego and the emergent person. Late in life, Durkheim insisted on the importance of this distinction: We say our individuality, and not our personality. Although the two words are often used synonymously, they must be distinguished with the greatest possi­ ble care, for the personality is made up essentially of supra-individual elements (DHN:339-340). Although Durkheim himself failed to adequately clarify this distinction early in his career (eg. in The Rules), in 1912 he took great care in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life to separate the two meanings. it is not at all true that we are more personal as we become more individualized. The two terms are in no way synonymous: in one sense, they oppose more than they imply one another. Passion individualizes, \ yet it also enslaves. Our sensations are essentially individual; yet we are more personal the more we are freed from our senses and able to think and act with concepts. So those who insist upon all the social ele­ ments of the individual do not mean by that to deny or debase the personality. They merely refuse to confuse it with the fact of individuation (EF:307-8). Durkheim's discovery of the evolving dialectic between uni­ versali zation in the grounds of rr.oral and cognitive discourse • • --20-­ • • • • • • • • • and the emergence of the autonomous person (see E. Leites, 1974) is of the greatest importance. Clearly, the distinction between ego and person is fundamental for the human sciences; yet the precise origin, nature, and significance of this root contrast remains to be articulated. Leaving analysis of Durk­ heim's theory of the emergence of the moralized person through history till the end of this Book, let us now explore further the many meanings of the "individual" on the generic level. 2. The Conflation of Meanings of the "Individual" on the Generic Level As noted, Durkheim's philosophically derived image of human nature paralleled his growing series of root dichotomies, thus leading him to progressively 'I:onflate," as Lukes terms it, at least the following contrasts: (1) Between the socially dete~minecand the organically or biologically given; (2) Between factors specific to particular societies, and abstracted or postulated features of "human nature ;" (3) Between factors that are general within a given so­ ciety or group and those that are particular to one or several individuals; (4) Between the experience and behavior of associated individuals, as opposed to those of isolated in­ dividuals; (5) Between socially prescribed obligations and spon­ taneous desires and behavior; (6) Between factors corning from "outside" the indivi­ dual and those generated within his consciousness; (7) Between thoughts and actions directed towards social or public objects and those which are purely person­ al and private; (8) Between altruistic and egocentric behavior (Lukes, 1973:20) . Certainly, one of critical points here is the extent to which these and other similar properties=an be legitimately con­ sidered parallel. In terms of the emergence of this ever-proli­ ferating series of dichotomous distinctions, however, I tend to think that they both proceeded from Durkheim's primal opposi­ • • • • ,. • • • • • • --21-­ tion between the egoistic and socialized halves of human na­ ture, and also later fed back and reinforced the potency of this prime opposition. Certainly, it is true that although Durkheim's doctrine of man as homo duplex served him as a po­ tent symbolic anchor from early on, it was not until toward the end of his career that Durkheim attempted to sum up this basic antinomy in his important 1914 paper "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions." Now, the dual or ambivalent nature of such protean terms as "individual" and "society" partially accounts for this proliferating series of more or less parallel dichoto-­ mies, for such terms combine increasing generality of mean­ ing and specificity of application. Whenever we encounter such persistent efforts to progressively unfold parallel properties in ever-more diverse situations, we may detect the workings of a subterranean unifying metaphor. Perhaps Durkheim's guiding metaphor early in his career was that of order and chaos, or more exactly, the analogous set was society is to the indivi­ dual as order is to chaos. As often happens, the very process of unfolding new applications of this guiding analogy leads, however, by the very nature of the diverse properties encoun­ tered, to progressive shifts in the connotational or metaphor­ ical "load." Toward the end of his career, Durkheim's guiding root opposition seemed to shift slightly, but significantly, on its metaphorical axes from order versus chaos, to universal­ ity versus particularity; or in other words, from nomos versus anomos, to logos versus alogos. Finally, we should note the significance of Durkheim's rhetorical inversion of the high valuation placed on the lone abstract individual posited by his polemical opponents, inclu­ ding Utilitarians, rationalists, and Romantic-Idealists alike. In one sense, this inversion must be considered a clever but ultimately misconceived rhetorical device, since he thereby ad­ mitted in the backdoor some of the very elements against which he had so resolutely taken up arms in the first place. Nonethe­ less, in a second and more powerful meaning, Durkheim's dis­ tinctions represented an inspired dialectical move. Giddens • • • • • • • • • • • --22-­ provides an important clue to the deeper significance of Durk­ heim's distinctions between the generic ego and the sociocul­ turally and historically constructed person, when he insists: "Durkheim's writings represent an attempt to detach "liberal individualism" regarded as a conception of the characteristics of the modern social order, from I methodological individualism ,n (197lb:2l0; see also Lukes 1968,1969, 1973). The deeper in­ tellectual and cultural ramifications of Durkheim's revolution in thought become clearer here if we recall that for centur­ ies the progressive mainlines of European thouqht had tacitly presumed there to be necessary inner logical, ethical, and his­ torical connections between so-called "methodological indivi­ dualism" and atomism (more precisely, logical nominalism), and its supposed epistemological correlates of pragmatic or utili­ tarian empiricism, individual political freedom and liberal democracy, and the "Universal Rights of Man." Durkheim's insistence, however, on a negative image of the isolated ego, and his transference of the source of moral goodness to society, coupled with his corresponding postulate that moral individualism, far from being a generic human uni­ versal, is rather a sociocultural historical construction, snapped apart the taci~ but deeply rooted,prevailing presup­ position of certain necessary iinks between logical nominal­ ism and moral and political autonomy. Durkheim thus severed the inner symbolic links between these doctrines in mediating between preceding cultural traditions by rejecting certain points and incorporating others in a revised form in a new and hopefully more compelling model. A bold and new powerful doctrine, indeed, and one that, to judge from the still per­ vasive pres~tion of the necessity of the inner symbolic links which Durkheim dissolved, has still to be understood in its full significance. I repeat: Durkheim demonstrated the possi­ bility of derivation of autonomous or moralized individualism from "realistic" or "socially organic" premises. As Parsons (1949) recognized, this was Durkheim's revolution in the epis­ temology and methodology of the social sciences. • • --23-­ However, it is imperative that we place Durkheim's dia­ • lectical achievement against the background of his rhetorical failure--I mean his unfortunate incorporation of crucial pre­ mises of his polemical opponents (see especially Part I, Book I ~,t,.~t Three). Giddens summarizes these important trade-offs: / • ... although Durkheim's attempt to detach moral from • methodological individualism is much more subtle and profound than what has been assumed by many of his critics, what results is a brittle synthesis, and es­ sentially an unsatisfactory one. The ambiguities, and the very serious deficiencies which run throughout his works, however, have to be understood in the light of this attempt. As so often happens with a writer whose works are strongly polemical in tone, ultimately he was unable to abandon certain of the very premises of which he was most critical in the writings of his op­ ponents (1971b:222). • It shall be our task, in part, to explore the making and un­ making of Durkheim's "brittle synthesis." • B. Insatiability Versus Moral Discipline: Durkheim's Early Version of His Doctrine of the Dualism of Human Nature Durkheim's early version of the dualism of human nature focussed on the presumption that the unsocialized ego--that organic bundle of drives energizing each organism--was inher­ • ently passionate and even insatiable. The need for moral dis­ cipline which could only be provided through sociocultural rules was a constant background reference throughout Durk­ I· I I heim's major early works such as The Division of Labor, Sui­ ~. cide, and the lectures later published as Moral Education. Since we shall consider his related, and very significant notions of "human finitude ll and the "golden mean" later (see Book Three), let us move immediately to consider his early • notions of man as homo duplex. Perhaps one of the earliest expressions in Durkheim's work of the traditional formula that "man is double" appeared in Suicide. Typically, as a moral philosopher, Durkheim began • by observing that human needs and desires must somehow be pro­ portioned to what is objectively possible if happiness is to be attainable. • • • • • • • • • • • -~24-- In the order of existence, no good is measureless. A biological quality can only fulfill the purposes it is meant to serve on condition that it does not transgress certain limits. 80 too it is with social phenomena (8:217). No living thing can be happy or even exist unless his needs are sufficiently proportioned to his means If his needsrequire more than can be grant­ ed they will be under continual friction or can only function painfully. Movements incapable of pro­ duction without pain tend not to be reproduced (8:246). Durkheim then observed that the organic needs of ani­ mals are ecologically and physiologically limited--that is, such needs are constrained and formed both by the amount of resources available in any given environment, and by the inher­ ent limitations in processing capacity and physiological magni­ tudes of any given organism. In the animal ..• this equilibrium is established with automatic spontaneity because the animal depends on purely material conditions. All the organism needs is that the vital supplies of substance and energy con­ stantly employed in the vital process should be period­ ically renewed by equivalent quantities; that replace­ ment be equivalent to use. When the void in resources created by existence is filled, the animal, satisfied, asks nothing further. Its power of reflection is not sufficiently developed to imagine other ends than those implicit in its physical nature (8:246). Thus, Durkheim argued that animals live in a state of (more or less) automatic balance in terms of their own built-in limita­ tions and in relation to the possible resources or "carrying capacity" of their supporting habitat. But Durkheim argued that man is governed by no such sim­ ple, built-in internal limitations or ecological equilibrium. Why? Because, over and above the obvious biological continui­ ties, the relations of human beings to their environment are socially and culturally defined, and thus, Durkheim supposed, without natural built-in limits. In other words, while biologi­ cal needs in man are limited as with the lower forms, socio­ culturally generated desires--unique to man-as-man--enjoy no such natural restraints. This is not the case with man, because most of his needs are not dependent on his body or not to the same degree. • • --25-­ .•• Beyond the indispensable minimum which satisfies nature when instinctive, a more awakened reflection • suggests better conditions, seemingly desirable ends craving fulfillment. Such appetites, however, admit­ tedly sooner or later reach a limit, which they cannot pass. But how to determine the quantity of well-being, comfort, or luxury legitimately to be craved by a hu­ man being? Nothing appears in man's organic nor in his • physiological constitution which sets a limit to such tendencies. The functioning of individual life does not require them to cease at once point rather than another; the proof being that they have constantly in­ creased since the beginnings of history, receiving more and more complete satisfaction, yet with no weak­ • ening of average health (S:247). Therefore, man must construct his own schedule of satisfac­ tion for wants; thus, every society is constantly engaged in negotiating ~ variable ratio, in terms of available resources • and the legitimacy of wants, between organically generated needs (eg. food) and socioculturally generated desires (eg. honor, or the demands of charisma). • Above all, how to establish their proper variations with different conditions of life, occupations, rela­ tive importance of services, etc.? In no society are • they equally satisfied on the different stages of the social hierarchy. Yet, human nature is substantially the same among all men, in its essential qualities. 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 Q.aPacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless a­ byss (S: 247) . ,'-'--­ • Given his notion of the pre-socialized human ego as not only egocentric but insatiable, Durkheim proceeeded to establish the constant need for regulation of these generic egoistic and undisciplined passions. Thus, Durkheim's ini­ • tial dichotomy presumed, on the one hand, the egocentric passions of unsocialized human nature, and on the other, the moral discipline provided only by society. Alone, or de­ socialized--that is, demoralized--the individual ego reverts • back to generic type, and,ultimatel~destroys itself in the fruitless passions so often seen in human action. • • --26-­ • • I. • • • • • But if nothing external can restrain this capacity, it can only be a source of torment to itself. Unlim­ ited desires are insatiable by definition, and insa­ tiability is rightly considered a sign of morbidity. Being unlimited, they constantly and infinitely sur­ pass the means at their command; they cannot be quen­ ched. Inextinguishable thirst is constantly renewed torture. It has been claimed, indeed, that human act­ ivity naturally aspires beyond assignable limits, and sets itself unattainable goals. But how can such an undetermined state be any more reconciled with the conditions of mental life than with the demands of physical life? (S:247-8). Having set up the specter of the undetermined and undisciplin­ ed pre-social human ego, Durkheimwas clearly setting up his critically important derivation of morality from society. The first requirement of such socially constructed rules, then, is discipline of these potentially insatiable desires. ... Passions must first be limited. Only then can they be harmonized with the faculties and satisfied. But since the individual has no way of limiting them, this must be done by some force exterior to him. A regula­ tive force must play the same role for moral needs which the organism plays for physical needs. This means that the force can only be moral. The awakening of con­ science interrupted the state of equilibrium of the ani­ mal's dormant existence; only conscience, therefore, can furnish the means to re-establish it (S:248). In a later comment, Durkheim likened che innate insatiability of the presocialized ego to the energies expressed in the in­ herent expansiveness of gases. Energy, whether physical, or­ ganic, or sociocultural, Durkheim suggested, indefinitely expands its radius of movement. Any force unopposed by some contrary one necessarily tends to lose itself in the infinite. Just as a body of gas, provided no other matter resists its expan­ sion, fills the immensity of space, so all energy-­ whether physical or moral--tends to extend itself with­ out limit so long as nothing intervenes to stop it. Hence the need for regulatory organs, which constrain the total complex of our vital forces within appropri­ ate limits. The nervous system has this function for our physical being. This system actuates the organs and allocates whatever energy is required by each of them. But the moral life escapes the physical system. Neither our brain nor any ganglion can assign limits to our intellectual aspirations or to our wills. For mental life, especially in its more developed forms, transcends the organism.... Sensations and physical • • --27-­ • • • • • • • • • appetites express only the conditions of the body, not ideas and complex sentiments. Only a power that is equally spiritual is able to exert influence upon spiritual forces. This spiritual power resides in the authority inherent in moral rules (ME:40-41). Durkheim was building here, from first principles, the role of society as the necessary counter-balance to the in­ cessant expansion of the energy of the pre-socialized ego. And like moral philosophers of old, Durkheim insisted on grounding his argument on the level of man's generic species essence; that is, man-as-man, in contrast to the lower biolo­ gical forms, is characterized by the "awakened reflection" and growth of conscience and consciousness, the striving for ideals beyond mere survival, which marks the intense new so­ ciocultural life of this new and powerful species. We shall soon explore in greater detail how Durkheim constructed his notion of the social bases of morality. For now, let us sim­ ply observe that by first theoretically grounding his argu­ ment on the level of society and culture as evolutionary e­ mergents, Durkheim implied that these potentially insatiable desires are not to be understood merely in terms of psycho­ biological needs. Rather, the "awakening of conscience" which defines ~an signifies that these ~ generic desires are ~ socioculturally generated. No other conclusion is logically possible, since man is, by evolutionary essence, the socio­ cultural animal. The implications of the fundamental princi­ ples of Durkheim's philosophical anthropology are numerous and profound, not only in altering his own theses but also many of our own today. For example, the unsocialized child cannot hereafter legitimately be considered just an animal like any other, for a new level of biological achievement-­ the sociocultural--has been achieved by man. By its generic species essence, the infant can only be considered a human animal. Certainly, it would be absurd to presume that even man's closest animal relation could, with provision of the most elaborate socialization procedures, ever become a human being among other human beings. What we sometimes forget • • • • • • • • • • • --28-­ when we repeat the old formula that man's inheritance is dou­ ble, is the critical fact that the sociocultural level in man feeds back down and alters his psychobiological make-up; in short, higher levels do influence lower levels. Even in terms of his biological constitution, man is not simply an organ­ ism like any other organism, for even his organic form and process have been socioculturally altered. In sum, much of man's biological inheritance has been socioculturally con­ structed. Indeed, the old formula that "man makes himself" has deeper dimensions than suspected. Further, this theoret­ ically profound argument is reinforced by Durkheim's insis­ tence that these new desires represent "moral forces," and thus, must consequently be opposed by moral forces. As Durk­ heim later insisted, even the features of our immorality are the expression of our system of morality (eg. see PECM:119). This same principle was the source of a number of Durkheim's more stimulating propositions, including the normality of crime; and we shall use it as a key guide which to later in­ troduce some surprises into Durkheim's own schemas. Given these negative and positive poles, let us next explore how Durkheim proposed that the original destructive or anomic energies of the pre-social ego are contained and redirected by society as the fount of moral discipline. Here we see Durkheim suggesting almost a simple one-to-one cor­ respondence between the negative qualities of this pre-social ego, and the positive qualities of morality. Proceeding from his initial metaphor of the indefinite expansion of the ra­ dius of the energy of the pre-socialized ego, in Moral Edu­ cation Durkheim first pictured morality as "like so many moulds with limiting boundaries into which we must pour our behavior" (ME:26). Since the energies of the organic ego have no determinate form of their own, they can only attain human form and shape through acceptance of definite and con­ stant rules of social conduct. "The function of morality is, in the first place, to determine conduct, to fix it, to e­ liminate the element of individual arbitrariness .., moral­ • • -29-­ • • • • • • • • ity is basically a constant thing" (ME:27). According to Durk­ heim, the first thing that the unsocialized child must be taught is that regularity of conduct required not only for survival, but for continued social interaction. Insofar as our inclinations, instincts, and desires lack any counterbalance, insofar as our conduct hangs on the relative intensity of uncontrolled dispositions, these dispositions are gusts of wind, erratic stop­ start affairs characteristic of children and primi­ tives, which as they endlessly split the will against itself, dissipate it on the winds of caprice and pre­ clude its gaining the unity and continuity that are the essential preconditions of personality. It is pre­ cisely in this development of self-mastery that we build up moral discipline (ME:46). In contrast to the potentially infinite passions of the isola­ ted organic ego, the very first defining characteristic of mo­ rality, as socially constructed, is regularity, stability, in a word, definition. But Durkheim then emphasized that there is more to moral­ ity than simply the stability and regularity of life provided by social norms, by cultural rules and meanings. A related as­ pect of morality is focus on attainable goals. Morality is basically a discipline. All discipline has a double objective: to promote a certain regularity in people's conduct, and to provide them with determinate goals that at the same time limit their horizons (ME:47). As we shall discover later, and as Giddens (197Ib:225-6) em­ phasizes, both aspects of assigning goals to the ego are cru­ cial--goals need to be both clearly definable and attainable. But if the individual ego is unable to either regularize its own energies, or to rise above its own egocentricity to devote its own energies to the attainment of defined goals, whence derives these devotions? Why should we do violence to our own natures? Surely power or constraint alone is not sufficient. In Weberian terms, the distinction Durkheim next draws is couched in terms of the source of legitimate moral authority. As always, underlying Durkheim's notion of legitimate author­ ity is the notion of the sacred. Ultimately, the only force able to pull the ego out of its passionate self-centered ~ro- • I • • • • • • • • • --30-­ fane) orbit is the moral or spiritual power embodied in the respect for the sacred as the source of all legitimate moral authority. I repeat: when Durkheim spoke here of constraint, he meant it not in the sense of physical forces, but rather in terms of the respect due to the foundations of legitimate moral authority (Parsons missed this distinction). By authority we must understand that influence which imposed upon us all the moral power that we acknow­ ledge as superior to us (ME:29). Morality is a system of commandments (ME:31). Thus, regularity and deference to the inherent moral and con­ ceptual superiority of collective processes constitute the first major characteristic of morality to Durkheim--namely, discipline. At the root of the moral life there is, besides the preference for regularity, the notion of moral author­ ity. Furthermore, these two aspects of morality are closely linked, their unity deriving from a more com­ plex idea that embraces them both. This is the concept of discipline. Discipline regularizes conduct. It im­ plies repetitive behavior under determinate conditions. But discipline does not emerge without authority--a regulating authority .... The fundamental element of morality is the spirit of discipline (ME:31). There is an additional element constituting morality besides discipline and obligatory respect--namely, desira­ bility. Durkheim later elaborated this element in his arti­ cle "The Determination of Mordl Facts." \Vhile Parsons (1949) tried to claim that this notion of desirability--of wishing to achieve the good--represented a key breakthrough in Durk­ heim's moral theory, we do not agree, since we now see that Durkheim's earlier notion of constraint did not refer pri­ marily to a crudely positivistic notion of external physical constraint. In fact, this distinction first appeared in The Division of Labor in the material that was suppressed in la­ ter editions, but which can be found in the appendix to Simpson's translation. In contrast to Parsons, Durkheim as­ sumed all along that internalized obligation referred to the sacredness of legitimate moral and intellectual authority. Hence, being drawn toward sacredness--its inherent desirabil­ • • • • • • • • • • • --31-­ ity--follows just as much as obligation from its role as the source of legitimacy. Clearly, all these basic elements of mo­ rality--discipline, authority, obligation or duty, and desira­ bility--are intimately bound up together in Durkheim's basic moral theory. We shall also briefly explore some additional factors, such as attachment to social groups and personal au­ tonomy, which complete the basic outlines of Durkheim's theo­ ry of morality. However important a clearer presentation of Durkheim's moral theory may be, it is not here our present task. Rather, we must now return to further explore our ori­ ginal problem: why did Durkheim so emphasize discipline as the very key to morality? Only if we begin to perceive the depths and magnitude of Durkheim's assignment of negative and even dangerous traits to the pre-socialized ego, can we hope to understand how he could insist: "Discipline derives its taisond'etre from itself; it is good that man is disciplined" (ME: 32). Let us now follow Durkheim as he rhetorically asks: "What makes moral di­ scipline good?" In clear contrast to the Utilitarian and Roman­ tic moralists alike, Durkheim observed how his hard-line com­ ments may be seen by some as an affront to "widespread human sentiment." Since such sentiments may still be "widespread," we shall now briefly explore Durkheim's rhetorical attack on competing counter-principles, an exercise that is valuable be­ cause it clearly reveals how his position differed not only from his opponents, but also from many reigning tacit presup­ positions of our own day. To limit, to restrain--this is to deny, to impede the process of living and thus partially to destroy; and all destruction is evil. If life is good, how can it be good to bridle it, to constrain it, to impose limits that it cannnot overcome? If life is not good, what is there of worth in the world? To be is to act, to live, and any reduction of life is a diminution of being. Does not all constraint, by definition, do violence to the nature of things? It was just such reasoning that led Bentham to see in law an evil scarcely tolerable, which could only be reasonably justified when it was clearly indispensable (ME:35-6). Clearly, the Utilitarians' penchant for laissez faire and their unprecedented claim that unbridled egoism will inevitably lead, • • --32-­ by a natural identity of interests, to altruism, presumes the investing of the lone, isolated, pre-socialized ego with preci­ • sely all those virtues that Durkheim progressively stripped a­ way. Against this investment, Durkheim rhetoricized: • Must one view discipline simply as an external palpa­ ble police force, whose single raison d'etre is to prevent certain behaviors and which, beyond such pre­ ventive action, has no other function? Or, on the con­ trary, may it not be, as our analysis leads us to sup­ pose, a means sui generis of moral education, having an intrinsic value which places its own special imprint upon moral character (ME:3?)? • To buttress his own case that'tliscipline in itself is • good," Durkheim proposed a series of positive functions played by moral disciplining of the pre-socialized organic ego. First, as Parsons later argued, social interaction cannot successfully , proceed without shared mutual expectations; thus, regularized communal norms provide the basic substructure of social life. At each point in time, it is necessary that the func­ tioning of the familial, vocational, and civic life • be assured; to this end, it is necessary that the per­ son be free from an incessant search for appropriate conduct. Norms must be established which determine what proper relationships are, and to which people conform. Deference to established norms is the stuff of our daily duties (ME:3?). • In contrast, however, to Parsons (and note the way functional­ ism is linked with Utilitarian attitudes), Durkheim insisted that "Such an analysis and justification of discipline is scarcely sufficient. For we cannot account for an institution • simply by demonstrating its social utility" (ME: 38) . • Therefore, Durkheim next emphasized that the very nature of man--since he represents only a small part of the universe-­ can attain fulfillment only if this prior limitation is accep­ ted. In opposition to traditional religionists who portrayed man's nature and "the flesh" as inherently evil, Durkheim ar­ gued that the preference for asceticism which he shares with these religions is thus "not good in and of itself." Rather, • all beings can only realize their true nature through accept­ ance of their prior particularity. If we believe that discipline is useful, indeed neces­ sary for the individual, it is because it seems to us • • --33-­ demanded by nature itself. It is the way in which nature realizes itself normally, not a way of • • • • • • • • • minimizing or destroying nature. Like everything else, man is a limited being: he is part of a whole. Physically, he is part of the universe: morally, he is part of society. Hence, he cannot, without viola­ ting his nature, try to supersede the limits imposed on him. Indeed, everything that is most basic in him partakes of this quality of partialness or particu­ larity. To say that one is a person is to say that he is distinct from all others: this distinction im­ plies limitation. If then, from our point of view, discipline is good, it is not that we regard the work of nature with a rebellious eye, or that we see here a diabolical scheme that must be foiled: but that man's nature cannot be itself except as it is disci­ plined. If we deem it essential that natural inclin­ ations be held within certain bounds, it is not be­ cause that nature seems to us bad, or because we deny the right to gratification: on the contrary, it is because otherwise such natural inclinations could have no hope of the satisfaction they merit (ME: 50-1). Now, clearly one of the factors distinguishing us fromother~ yet by which each of us completes our nature--is our own per­ sonality. Durkheim next argued that personality~an onlydevel­ op if the ego accepts the limiting boundaries distinguishing it from the rest of the world and from others. Discipline is thus useful, not only in the interests of society and as the indispensable means without which regular cooperation would be impossible, but for the welfare of the individual himself. By means of discipline we learn the control of desire without which man could not achieve happiness. Hence, it even contributes in large measure to the development of that which is of fundamental importance for each of us: our personality (ME:48). In terms of socialization and education, especially the moralizing of the ego--the first prerequisite is that the child be taught self-discipline. To Durkheim, self-discipline was the key precondition for the successful construction of the personality structure, and the subsequent welfare of the in~ividual. The capacity for constraining our inclinations, for restraining ourselves--the ability that we acquire in the school of moral discipline--is the indispen­ sable condition for the emergence of reflective, in­ dividual will. The rule, because it teaches us to re­ strain and master ourselves, is a means of emancipa­ tion and of freedom (ME:48). • • • • • • • • • • • --34-­ It is important to emphasize that Durkheim did not attempt to justify mastering the inordinate desires of the "enemy within" in terms of the supposed evilness of man's nature. Nor did he consider the role of moral discipline in the ed­ ucational process as simply a "police action," designed to prevent the depredations of one freedom against another. Moral discipline not only buttresses the moral life ..• it performs 'an important function in forming character and personality in general. In fact, the most essential element of character is this capa­ city for restraint--as they say, of inhibition-­ which allows us to contain our passions, our de­ sires, our habits, and subject them to law (ME:46). Now, the subjection and transformation of pre-social anomie into a sociocultural nomos is not merely the means for creating character, but more importantly, the acceptance of rules, meanings, and determinate horizons constitutes the very preconditions of human happiness, freedom, and even individual health. We should not see in the discipline to which we sub­ ject children a means of constraint necessary only when it seems indispensable for preventing culpable conduct. Discipline is in itself a factor sui generis of education. Through discipline and by means of it alone are we able to teach the child to rein in his desires, to set limits to his appetites of all kinds, to limit and, through limitation, to define the goals of his activity. This limitation is the condition of happiness and of moral health (ME:43-44). But how can the repression of individual desires be consider­ ed the way to freedom? Today our moral subsidization of the autonomous spontaneity of the unencumbered ego is so great that we have trouble even perceiving the structure of Durkheims argument. For isn't freedom itself defined as the release from all previous, especially irrational, constraints? On the con­ trary, in a seeming paradox Durkheim contended that freedom only emerges out of the school of self-discipline. Imagine a being liberated from all external restraint, a despot still more absolute than those of which his­ tory tells us, a despot that no external power can re­ strain or influence. By definition, the desires of such a being are irresistible. Shall we say, then, that he is all powerful? Certainly not, since he himself cannot resist his desires. They are masters of him, as of every­ • • --35--­ • thing else. He submits to them; he does not dominate them. In a word, when the inclinations are totally liberated, when nothing sets bounds to them, they themselves become tyrannical, and their first slave • is precisely the person who experiences them. What a sad picture this presents (ME: 44). Since we moderns have so often conceived of freedom and auto­ nomy in wholly negative terms, as a progressive shedding or • disengagement from traditional claims on us, Durkheim's ironic paradox grates on our sensibilities and moral fervor. But Durk­ heim continued extending the irony by insisting on the impo­ tency and self-destructiveness of ego-based desires. • A despot is like a child; he has a child's weaknesses because he is not master of himself. Self-mastery is ) the first condition of all tru~ power, of all liberty worthy of the name. One cannot be master of himself when he has within him forces that, by definition, can­ not be mastered ...• Since there is nothing to restrain them, they inevitably go to violent extremes, which are self-destroying (ME:45). Certainly, Durkheim's insights here run forcefully against the t mode~ethos ~_liberation is to be primarily found in con- ,\ • tinuou~~ease, instead of self-mastery. • Not only freedom but happiness itself, Durkheim argued, is attainable only if we learn to inhibit our inherent and po­ tentially insatiable egoistic desires. The very act of scaling down these expansive energies enables them to gain the possi­ bility of satisfaction. The totality of moral regulations really forms about each person an imaginary wall, at the foot of which a • multitude of human passions simply die without being able to go further. For the same reason--that they are contained--it becomes possible to satisfy them (ME:42). The irony continues, for the very constriction~fhorizonsthat would inevitably bring forth a mixture of indignation and path­ • os from representatives of our contemporary liberatingsu~cult­ ures, instead brings relief to human nature, Durkheim contend­ ed. He thus counseled us in the seemingly paradoxical puzzles of a very different therapeutic--that is, human happiness can • only be attained to the extent to which the inherent passions of the pre-socialized ego can be constrained or disciplined to embrace only regular, determinate, alld achievable goals. • p , • • • • • • • • • • --36-­ Rather than instilling the drive for individual ambition and fulfillment of our limitless human potential, the prime func­ tion of education, Durkheim argued, is to inculcate the spirit of restraint and realizable ambitions. Education must help the child understand that ... there are limits based on the nature of things, that is to say, in the nature of each of us. This has no­ thing to do with insidiously inculcating a spirit of resignation in the child; or curbing his legitimate ambitions; or preventing him from seeing the condi­ tions existing around him. Such proposals would con­ tradict the very principles of our social system. But he must be made to understand that the way to be hap­ py is to set proximate and realizable goalR~ cnrres­ ponding to the nature of each person, an~~o a~tempt to reach objectives by straining neurotically and un­ happily toward infinitely distant and consequently in­ a~essible goals .... We must make the child appreciate that he cannot rely for happiness upon unlimited power, knowledge, or wealth; but that it can be found in very diverse situations, that each of us has his sorrows as well as his joys, that the important thing is to dis­ cover a goal compatible with one's abilities, one which allows him to realize his nature without seeking to sur­ pass it in some manner, thrusting it violently an~arti­ fICIaITy~eyond its natural limits*(ME:49-50). --- ---­ Conversely, Durkheim argued that moral discipline is not only necessary for social functioning, to complete man's nature, to develop personality or character structure, for freedom and happiness, but moreover, discipline is essential for health (see also Book Three). Without constraint of the egocentric passions of one half of human nature, a con­ stitutional human dis-ease rages out of control. We have observed that discipline is often viewed as a violation of man's natural constitution, since it im­ pedes his unrestricted development. Is this contention sound? Quite to the contrary, an inability to restrict one's self within determinate limits is a sign of dis­ ease--with respect to all forms of human conduct and, even more generally, for all kinds of biological beha­ vior. With a certain amount of nourishment a normal man is no longer hungry: it is the bulimiac who cannot be satisfied (ME:38). Indeed, Durkheim argued, again and again, here and especially in Suicide, that the release from the constraints of moral dis­ cipline--or anomie--and the release of the insatiable passions harbored in the human ego--can only result in suffering. The • • --37-­ • • • • • • • • • inevitable consequence of the release of the affliction of "dis-eases of the infinite" is self-destruction. A need, a desire, freed from all restraints, and all rules, no longer geared to some determinate object­ ive and, through this same connection, limited and contained, can be nothing but a source of constant anguish for the person experiencing it. What grati­ fication indeed, can such a desire yield, since by definition it isincapable~f being satisfied? An in­ satiable thirst cannot be slaked*(ME:39-40). -- -­ Thus, the only true way for man to avoid the affliction of "insatiable thirst" and self-destruction--Durkheim's equiva­ lent of the metaphysical notions of evil and sin--is for the will to bEi!come disciplinedin the "school of duty"--that is, in social obligation. In order to have a full sense of self-realization, man, far from needing to see limitless horizons un­ rolling before him, in reality finds nothing as un­ happy as the indeterminate reach of such a prospect. Far from needing to feel that he confronts a career without any definite terminus, he can only be happy when involved in definite and specific tasks. This limitation by no means implies, however, that man must arrive at stme fixed position where ultimately he finds tranquillity. In intermittent steps one can pass from one special task to others equally specific, without drowning in the dissolving sense of limitless­ ness. The important thing is that behavior have a clear-cut objective, which may be grasped and which limits and determines it (ME:40). Durkheim completed his outline of his philosophy of "human finitude" and the need for limitation by suggesting that man too must submit to the natural law that "all life is complex equilibrium." In order to live, we have to confront the multiple requirements of life with a limited reserve of vital energy. The amount of energy that we can and should devote to achieving each particular goal is neces­ sarily limited. It is limited by the sum total of the strength at our disposal and the relative signi­ ficance of the ends we pursue. All life is thus a complex equilibrium whose elements limit one another; this balance cannot be disrupted without producing un­ happiness or illness. Moreover, those activites in whose favor the equilibrium is disrupted become a source of pain to the person--and for the same rea­ son--the disproportionate development accorded to them (ME: 39) . --38-­ Thus, with his philosophy of "human finitude" Durkheim pro­ vides an explanation--a "theodicy" and a "therapeutic" if you f· will--of man's essential nature, the causes of the inevitable tensions renting his equilibrium, and causing human suffering, the way forward to happiness, and so on. Even as a positivist, Durkheim clearly stands in an honorable tradition of moral philosophy reaching all the way back to Aristotle and his Ethics. C. A Preliminary Critique It is not my purpose to engage here in a full-scale critique of Durkheim's sociological theory of moral reality. Further, I shall relegate many criticisms of Durkheim's doc­ • trine of the dualism of human nature as they our present concerns to Book Three. Instead, are relevant to I wish now to merely note the following points which may prove relevant to our subsequent explorations. Hopefully, this brief examina­ • tion of the basic outlines of Durkheim's early moral theory has revealed some of the many reasons why Durkheim considered discipline absolutely necessary to restrain the potentially insatiable and egocentric passions of the organic ego. How­ • ever, tique I feel compelled to lodge some objections. My first cri­ is directed at the very topic which Durkheim chose here for his own--namely, the grounds of moral obligation. Now, it is only by perceiving the role of the extreme­ • ly negative, even chaotic, reality of the insatiable passions of the pre-socialized human ego in posing dangers to the moral life, that I can even begin to understand why Durkheim assigned discipline the pre-eminent role in the moral life. Certainly, ~ • by this disproportionate emphasis, Durkheim another fundamental aspect which many moral larqely ignored theorists have postulated as the very foundation of morality--namely, equity or reciprocity. It was precisely at this point that the great • Piaget objected to Durkheim's moral theory, for he noted that Durkheim's notion of morality was largely hierarchical, as if rules were unilaterally handed down from on high to the child. • • --39-­ • • • • • • • • • Instead (for example, in The Moral Judgement of the Child, 1965), Piaget distinguished two different forms of the con­ struction of morality--the hierarchical form, and the type of reciprocity negotiated between peers, especially among child­ ren playing games for example. Piaget, of course, was more in­ terested in the second type, while Durkheim was more interest­ ed in the first. Yet,is any account of the genesis of morality complete without discussion of both obligation and reciprocity? Indeed, we would do well to remember Durkheim's own dual em­ phasis on society as both the source and the object of moral rules; morality regulates social relations. This curious lapse in Durkheim's theoretical framework helps to explain why--cven when working within Durkheim's own positivistic frame of reference--he gave so little attention to the varied rationales underlying specific types of s:>cial obliga­ tions. In Durkheim's system we scarcely find mention of the reasons for the many moral rules and prohibitions which guide our lives--namely, the concern with the potential harm (whether __-_"__~ . •__ ~.__. --_. . . ~ .0-- ._ .~_" __. physical, mo~a.lL-Q.£_EPi-ritual)thatwe may do to others (whe­ ther-by';;ission or comrni-~-~i;n-)"by~ur actions (whether~_tI:e~ be consciousiy 'intende~-or_mereiy emerge as un';nticipated re­ sults) • Further, Durkheim's limitation of the object of morality to social groups slights the fact that moral rules and indivi­ dual duties are directed not only to society and self but even to the world. Here Durkheim was led astray by his later insis­ tence that the choice of physical objects with which to invest sacredness is largely arbitrary; on the contrary, I maintain that the choice of prime symbols is rarely arbitrary (eg. see Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols, 1973, or Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 1967). If there be techno-logic, there also has to be symbol logic; and here the particular characteristics of the symbolic object in a symbolic process are often crucial. Moreover, how could we, within the confines of Durkheim's so­ ciologistical system, even begin to speak of an ecological con­ science, of the pressing need for a "wilderness ethic" (eg. see Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, 1966, or Christo­ • • • • • • • • • • --40-­ pher Stone, Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights For Natural Objects, 1974)1 Clearly, Durkheim's ascetic obsession with repressing the inordinate desires of the "enemy within" usurped recogni­ tion of potentially significant wider moral horizons. However, even given the magnitude and significance of this obsession in his system, Durkheim was still often not clear about the precise source of this important insatiable drive. Earlier I suggested that, given the logic of his theoretical grounding of his argument in man's evolutionary status as the sociocult­ ural animal, any invidious dichotomization between culture and biology was hereafter subject to critical review by the fact that, by definition, man's sociocultural achievement had chang­ ed the very structure of his organic inheritance. In addition, it seemed clear that biological appetites were restrained nat­ urally--either by physiological limitation or by the upper lim­ its of carrying capacity of the supporting environment. Unfor­ tunately, however, Durkheim didn't seem to perceive these ful­ ler implications of his original evolutionary propositions: a pity for both him and for us. Had he done so,my task in eluci­ dating the possible extensions of this logic in terms of the wider implications of his Suicide schemas would have been great­ ly eased. In other words, if the potential for insatiability is derived from man's generic essence as the sociocultural ani­ mal, then it follows that we must look to the specific config­ urations of cultural values in any historical society for the specific expressions--whether realized, repressed, or redi­ rected--of this potential drive for infinity. For example, Durkheim unfortunately often speaks of the unsocialized child as almost an animal. And in much of Moral Education and Suicide Durkheim seemed to revert back to~~~ry position which his own theoretical logics had seemed to confute--namely, that the source of this key insatiability (his positivist analogy with old notions of evil and sin)--was biological, that is, expres­ sed primarily in terms of the sensual appetites. Thus, by a sort of covert operation in the underground of thought, Durkheim's posivitism led him here (however much he • • --41-­ • • • • • • • • • may have consciously rejected the identification) toward link­ ing in his system the source of human suffering to the "origi­ nal sin" (our organic inheritance) embodied in the inordinate desires exptessed through the sensual appetites (the "flesh"). The tension in human existence derives from the inherent con­ flict in the nature of man between these two separate lower and higher entities warring in each man's breast. However, Durkheim's early tragic vision did not include here the per­ haps more critical sources of tension and suffering in the hu­ man condition. I refer to the wrenching, exhaustin~ conflicts between competing value systems or moralities, especially when these compete for ascendancy within the same person. I believe social psychologists refer to this situation as "cognitive dis­ sonance." Certainly, Max Weber, Durkheim's contemporary, knew from tragic personal experience (eg. see Mitzman, 1971) the tensions introduced by the warring demons holding the "very fibers of our lives." The later Durkheim moved closer to this position, as we shall soon see. Now, one might attempt to rescue part of Durkheim's "brittle synthesis" by suggesting a distinction between his conflation of the human ego in terms of the concrete ego of the child, for instance, and the abstract generic essence of the nature of the human species. Nevertheless, Durkheim's lo­ gical troubles have only begun. For we have seen that Durkheim had insisted, when he came to theoretically ground man's nature in terms of his evolutionary achievement, that man is man not only because of those sociocultural achievements known as civ­ ilization" (eg. ME:325), but also because his generic species nature is based on a "newly awakened conscience," "spiritual forces," "moral and mental life," and so forth. How, then, can it be that this generic species essence (I use the term in the evolutionary, not the metaphysical, sense) of man-as­ man--even if expressed in the concrete pre-socialized ego of the child--could simultaneously be the source of both the amor­ ality of the non-social ego and the moral discipline 'of socie­ ty? If man is, by nature, social and cultural, then from what derives his essential amorality? His passionate insatiability? • • --42':"'­ • Given the thrust of Durkheim's evolutionary arguments, we have already ruled out of court man's animal nature {since our biolo­ gical needs and processes are naturally disciplined). The only '. candidate left is the old standby--the pre-socialized ego; but how can we reconcile the social and moral origins of the human individual--even the ego, evolutionarily considered--with its supposed insatiability? How can Durkheim legitimately have sought to maintain his stark dichotomy between the individual and the social, when he himself had insisted that the very foundations of the human individual-- as an 'awakened conscience" • a new reflective center--em~rges in evolutionary terms only • from sociocultural origins? In other words, is the ego more im­ portant here as the source of insatiable drives, or as repre­ senting the absence of moral rules and rational concepts? I believe the latter is more acceptable, and, indeed, that is the direction in which Durkheim's thought tended to develop. • Now, Durkheim simply cannot have it both ways; and in­ deed, in other places the opposition is much simpler and less paradoxical when he speaks as if the basically amoral passions • of the troublesome ego derived from the lower organic levels. In that case, the only logical conclusion is that the human ego is virtually identical with animal egos, with the biological ego as such, with the very vital source of life itself. There is, however, scant justification for pursuing such an abstact­ ed argument very far beyond its obvious applications, and thus, evident limitations. Certainly this alternative is not a socio­ • cultural explanation (see also Book Three). Therefore, we are left little choice but to conclude that Durkheim's thought on this absolutely crucial question of the source of insatiability --whether it be the pre-socialized organic ego or human socie­ • ty and culture itself--did, indeed, represent a "brittle syn­ thesis." Surely :nuch of the unsatisfactory "brittleness" of this first view is that it represented an unwarranted incorp­ oration--even with the rhetorical inversion--of a foreign ele­ • ment into Durkheim's thought (see Book Three). Further, the first solution represented a way of metaphorically translating and anchoring in his positivistic system some of the tradi­ • • --43-­ • • • • • • • • • tional moral elements such as sin and evil which otherwise could not be acco~dated. Moreover, we need not really be surprised that, even as a pion~er sociologist who rightly insisted that social facts be explained socially, Durkheim's concurrent other role as a positivist moral philosopher constantly led him to surrepti­ tiously contravene the basic methodological rules that he him­ self had laid down as the foundation of his school. Indeed, few have noticed how inconsistent Durkheim was in regularly assign­ ing key dynamic elements of human action to the very abstract­ ion--the lone, isolated, pre-socialized ego--which he had so powerfully criticized in the "social contract" theorists. Here, Durkheim's logical flaw was that rather than portraying the child as a socially neutral entity, possessed of certain pro­ clivities and potentialities awaiting cultural imprinting, on the contrary, he constantly pictured human nature as the power­ ful source of negative and destructive passions. Besides the rhetorical mistake of accepting a basic image from his polem­ ical opponents, here reinforced by Cartesian metaphors rife in his own culture, Durkheim's dark doctrine of generic human na­ ture gets him into the serious bind, as it does to all social thinkers who unwittingly insist on basing society and culture on psychological or biological premises, of proposing that some of the most dynamic, generative, and significant sources of human action are to be derived primarily from lower, non-human, non-sociocultural levels. Besides running directly counter to his own notion of society and culture as evolutionary emergents, and social facts as sui generis phenomena that cannot be re­ duced to lower levels, and against my definition of man as the sociocultural animal, and further, against Parsons' (1949) and others' important thesis that the advance of social science depends on the progressive over-coming of "naturalistic" (i.e. physical, biological, psychological, geographical, etc.) re­ ductions by properly drawn sociocultural explanations, Durk­ heim's sociologically inadmissible image of human nature as darkly and destructively egoistic and insatiable implicitly reduces society and culture to the relatively passive role of • • --44-­ con~raining or simply redirecting the really critical organic desires (see also Book Three for fuller development of these • objections). Perhaps Durkheim's multiple commitments here--I mean extending a key Cartesian logic deeply embedded in his own cultural tradition, and rhetorically inverting the high valua­ • tion of the generic individual so insistently proclaimed by his polemical opponents, all the while advancing the claims of pos­ itivist moral science--barred complete and unconditional em­ brace of the fully sociocultural position. The sociological • position more fully consistent with Durkheim's own stated me­ thodological prescriptions is that society and culture should be considered, both in generic and evolutionary terms, as the crucially important generative and directive sources of the most • significant aspects of human action. In sum, despite the evident cultural and polemical functions served by the early version of his doctrine of the dualism of human nature, and the acknow­ ledged potency of his ever-proliferating series of interpretive • root dichotomies originally anchored in this same image, none­ • theless, Durkheim's other role as a positivist moral philosopher intrudes too strongly here for us to follow him in his funda­ mental doctrine of the individual half of human nature as in­ herently insatiable. • D. Durkheim'~ Tragic Vision of the Human Condition: His Later Notion of the Duality of Human Nature Preface. Although Durkheim's notion of the endemic antagonism between the individual ego and the socially constructed person represented a seminal dichotomy from early in his career, it • was not until much later that Durkheim came to expfcitly and • systematically formulate this notion as a constitutive founda­ tion of his doctrine. Those secondary observers who have missed the significance of this crucial split in man's nature running through his earlier works are not alone, for even Durkheim's critics in his own day failed to recognize this dichotomy as one of the driving forces behind his masterpiece The Elementary • --45-­ • • • • • • • • Forms of the Religious Life. Yet, Durkheim announced in the introduction his intention to reformulate this old staple of traditional moral philosophy. According to the well-known formula, man is double. There are two beings in him: an individual being which has its foundation in the organism, and the circle of whose activities is therefore strictly limited, and a social being which represents the highest reality in the intellectual and moral order that we can know by observation--I mean society. This duality of our nature has its consequence in the practical order, the irreducibility of a moral ideal to a utilitarian motive, and in the order of thought, the irreducibility of reason to individual experience. In so far as he belongs to society, the individual transcends himself, both when he thinks and when he acts (EF:29). Again and again in The Elementary Forms, Durkheim utilized the old formula of homo duplex in highly innovative ways. For exam­ ple, in terms of the awakening of conscience and consciousness, and thus the emergence of the person in collective ritual,Durk­ heim explicitly referred to the duality of human nature. This is the objective foundation of the idea of the soul: those representations whose flow constitutes our interior life are of two different species which are irreducible one into another. Some concern them­ selves with the external and material world; others, with an ideal world to which we attribute a moral su­ periority over the first. So we are really made up of two beings facing in different and almost contrary di­ rections, one of whom exercises a real preeminence over the other. Such is the profound meaning of the antithesis which all men have more or less clearly conceived between the body and the soul, the material and the spiritual beings who coexist within us. Moralists and preachers have often maintained that no one can deny the reality of duty and its sacred character without falling into materialism. And it is true that if we have no idea of moral and religious imperatives, our psychical life will all be reduced to one level, all our states of consciousness will be on the same plane, and all feel­ ing of duality will vanish. To make this duality intel­ ligible, it is, of course, in no way necessary to ima­ gine a mysterious and unrepresentable substance, under the name of the soul, which is opposed to the body .... It remains true that our nature is double; there really is a particle of divinity in us because there is within us a particle of these great ideas which are the soul of the group (EF:298-9). • • --46-­ Two years after publication of The Elementary Forms, Durkheim expressed surprise and chagrin that these underlying • root dichotomies had not been adequately understood as the cru­ cial foundation of that masterwork. The basic opposition with which Durkheim filled in the old formula of homo duplex was the contrast between the privatized physical sensations and • appetites, almost the autistic, inward-turning of the organic ego, on the one hand, and the publicly communicable collective representations expressed in terms of the increasingly univer­ salizable moral rules and rational concepts emerging from the • generic sociocultural process, and embedded in the core struct­ ures of conscience and consciousness constituting the person. The general failure of others to understand his crucial series of interpretive symbolic equations underlying the analytical • framework of The Elementary Forms led Durkheim to reemphasize and explicitly articulate them in two important later addresses. In 1913, Durkheim contributed to an important discussion, pub­ lished in the Bulletin de la Societe francaise de philosophie • (see Lukes, 1973:585), on "Le Probleme religieux et la dualite de la nature humaine." And in 1914, Durkheim published his article "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions" (in Wolff, 1960). Since the latter paper is Durkheim's most • explicit statement of this doctrine, we shall focus on it here. As noted earlier, in the very process of extending his root i.nterpretive dichotomies, Durkheim's model tended to shift slightly but significantly on its rhetorical axes. First, insa­ tiability was no longer the simple product of the inherently• J inordinate desires of the human pre-socialized ego. Rather than acting as the demonic source of destructive desires, the organic ego came to be portrayed as merely privatized and cir­ • cumscribed by its own inherent limitations. Thus, it is most significant for our present purposes that Durkheim's concern shifted from emphasizing the presence of destructive drives in the pre-socialized generic ego, to the generic absence of • moral rules and universalizable concepts (see also Book Three) . The antagonism between the two halves of human nature was, of course, still present, and even intensified. For now, • • --47-­ rather than the insatiability of the non-social half of human nature being branded as the cause of man's endemic torment, it • was instead the impossibility of simultaneously satisfying the conflicting demands of both the physically privatized organic J ego and the claims of society on the moralized and rationalized person. Truly, it seemed man was "double," for the two beings • in him represented different universes of being and valuing, ,. of knowing and doing. "Torn between two masters"--it was this old image of man's tormented lot which lay at the heart of Durk­ heim's deepening tragic vision. Now, every endemic conflict re­ quires that we finally take our stand, and choose which side will prevail. In this light, Durkheim's later sociological work can be seen, in the last analysis, as that of a positivist mo- ~ ral philosopher issuing a "priestly" call for the necessary and • prolonged sacrifice of the ego, so that logos --universality in morality and rationality in thought--might ultimately come to prevail. Durkheim's call for a kind of modern stoic asceti­ cism embodied the essence of his own socivlogical system and • that of the Durkheimian school. In the face of the spreading aggressions and impending doom of Worla War I, Durkheim, as the "high priest" of positivist moral sociology, issued final calls for the sacrifice of the ego--or eros--and the enthrone­ • ment of reason--or logos. 1. Ego is to Person as Body is to Soul When he finally came to explicitly and systematically art­ • iculate his philosophical anthropology, Durkheim began by in­ sisting that "the constitutional duality of human nature"-­ especially in terms of the root opposition between the body and the soul--is a universal phenomenon. The antagonism be­ • tween physical and moral-rational principles is perennial, and always and everywhere these invidious dualisms between body and soul, between Geist and Welt, are inextricably bound up with the religious realms of the sacred and the profane. Inevitably, • things connected with the sacred principle are invested with higher dignity, while things linked with the profane principle, by virtue of their diammetrically opposed nature to the divine, • • --48-­ are reserved for general opprobrium. As a positivist moral philosopher, Durkheim attempted • to "save the phenomena" by translating these seemingly univer­ sal dualities of human nature into purely sociologistical form- l ulas. Durkheim insisted that any universal social or cultural phenomena cannot be illusory, that is, either mere ignorant ~ superstition or misplaced metaphysics. The universal must be I true--this was one of Durkheim's fundamental principles. There­ fore, since Durkheim presumed that symbols are real in their causes and effects, he proposed that the duality of human na­ • ture, especially in terms of the ubiquitous opposition between the body and the soul, can be deciphered as merely a symbolic projection of a constitutive experiential reality. Again and again, Durkheim sounded the same refrain. • A belief that is as universal and permanent as this cannot be purely illusory. There must be something in man that gives rise to this feeling that his na­ ture is dual, a feeling that men in all known civi­ lizations have experienced (DHN:326). • Against competing monistic images of man, which dismiss this • duality as illusory, Durkheim contended that, since this inner tension has been felt by all peoples in all times and places, it cannot thereby be legitimately dismissed simply as one of man's earlier aberrations. It is still true that at all times man has been dis­ quieted and malcontent. He has always felt that he is pulled apart, divided against himself; and the belief and practices to which, in all societies and all civi­ • lizations, he has always attached the greatest value, have as their object not to suppress these inevitable divisions but to attenuate their consequences, to give them meaning and purpose, to make them more bearable, and at the very least, to console man for their exist­ ence. We cannot admit that this universal and chronic • state of malaise is the product of a simple aberration, that man has been the creator of his own suffering, and • that he has stupidly persisted in it, although his na­ ture predisposed him to live harmoniously (DHN:330-1). Durkheim's deep sense that this duality is irretrieva­ bly embedded in the very nature of life can be seen in a re­ port of a doctoral examination in 1910. Lukes reports the fol­ lowing exchanges: • I !. • • • • • • • • • --49-- Durkheim: There is a sense in which "we" are subject to physical laws, and another in which "we" perform the moral law: we are double. Pradines (the candidate): I wanted to put an end to this dualism. Durkheim: You have not succeeded. Reason, you say, uni­ fies the tendencies in the moral law just as in the physical law it unifies natural phenomena, but do you not see that this antagonism is in us, in ourselves? What difficulty is there here? How can you imagine that a dialetical trick will unify this dualism, which all thinkers before you have expressed, each in his own language, some tracing the social to the perceptible, others opposing the rational to the individual, but all seeing one characteristic, the most profound of all moral characteristics. You who claim to have so keen an apprehension of complexity, how is it that you have not felt that there is always in us something which is ele­ vating, while another part of us draws us in an opposite direction? Pradines: It has seemed to me that classical rationalism was wrong not to put an end to this undeniable dualism. Durkheim: Such a solution is impossible. You have found in all systems an internal opposition. You have denoun­ ced this as a contradiction; you should have see that this contradiction is in life itself (Lukes, 1973:646). This last phrase--"the contradiction is in life itself"--aptly sums up Durkheim' s evolving tragic sense of the human condition Durkheim further suggested that "Psychological analysis has, in fact, confirmed the existence of this duality--it finds it at the very heart of our inner life" (DHN: 326). Durkheim found this psychological validation in the apparent constitu­ tional opposition between the physically rooted sensations and appetites, on the one hand, and conceptual thought and moral rules on the other. Although we have noted these dich­ otomies before, it is important to recognize how these opposi­ tions moved to the very center of Durkheim's later thought, while concern with the insatiability of the pre-socialized or­ ganic ego faded into the background. The physically rooted ego was no longer seen as insatiable, just fatally circumscri­ bed in its own private orbit. Our intelligence, like our activity, presents two very different forms: on the one hand, are sensa­ tions and sensory tendencies; on the other, concep­ tual thought and moral activity. Each of these two • • • • • • • • • • • --50-­ parts of ourselves represents a separate pole of our being, and these two poles are not only dis­ tinct from one another, but are opposed to one ano­ ther. Our sensory appetites are necessarily egoistic: they have our individuality and it alone as their ob­ ject. When we satisfy our hunger, our thirst, and so on, without bringing any other tendency into play, it is ourselves and ourselves alone, that we satisfy. Conceptual thought and moral activity are, on the con­ trary, distinguished by the fact that the rules of con­ duct to which they conform can be universalized. There­ fore, by definition, they pursue impersonal ends. Mo­ rality begins with disinterest, with attachment to some­ thing other than ourselves. A sensation of color or sound is closely dependent on my individual organism, and I cannot detach the sensation from my organism. maddition, it is impossible for me to make my aware­ ness pass over into someone else ..•. Concepts, on the contrary, are always common to a plurality of men. They are constituted by means of words, and neither the vo­ cabulary nor the grammar of a language is the work or product of one particular person. They are rather the results of a collective elaboration, and they express the anonymous collectivity that employs them.••. Be­ cause they are held in common, concepts are the supreme instrument of all intellectual exchange. By means of them, minds communicate (DHN:327). To Durkheim, since physical sensations and appetites are neces­ sarily rooted in the organism, this self-limiting particularity meant that they cannot, by definition, rise above their purely private sensational level. On the other hand, since concepts and moral rules are social both in their origin and object-­ that is, impersonal and collective--they tend to become uni­ versalized. Note that Durkheim here explicitly suggests that these lower level organic needs can be satisfied; yet, by vir­ tue of their purely physical base, such need-satisfactions re­ main egocentric and thus inherently private. Therefore, these two levels of our organism and our mo­ ral and intellectual life are opposed to one another as the in­ dividual ego is contrasted with the impersonal collective cul­ ture, and thus, as private is opposed to public. Since the two beings within us--ego and person (body and soul)--are simul­ taneously drawn in different directions, Durkheim maintained that man's inner life is irretrievably marked by a oscillation back and forth between these two opposing poles of our exist­ ence. Because our inner life has a "double center of gravity," • • --51-­ • • • • • • • • the perennial problem of resolving the competing claims of these beings and maintaining an integrated, coherent person­ ality structure is greatly intensified. These two aspects of our psychic life are, therefore, opposed to each other as the personal and the imper­ sonal. There is in us a being that represents every­ thing in relation to itself and from its own point of view; in everything that it does, this being has no other object but itself. There is another being in us, however, which knows things sub specie aeternitis, as if it were participating in some thought other than its own, and which, in its acts, tends to accomplish ends that suroass i.ts own. The old formula homo du­ plex is therefore verified by the facts. Far from-be­ rng-simple, our inner life has something that is like a double center of gravity. On the one hand, is our individuality--and more particularly, our body in which it is based; on the other is everything in us that expresses something other than ourselves (DHN:327-9). The outlines of Durkheim's later tragic vision of life thus emerged, reminiscent in its pathos to the earlier empha­ sis on insatiability, but now directed instead to the inevita­ ble discord between the two warring halves of our nature. Rather than portraying the ego and the person, the physical and the mo­ ral, the private and the public, the concrete and the universal halves of our beings, as necessarily complementary, Durkheim contended that these opposing forces wage an eternal struggle for ascendancy over our inner lives. To Durkheim, human reality is fundamentally conflictual. Not only are these two groups of states of conscious­ ness different in their origins and their properties, but there is a true antagonism between them. They mu­ tually contradict and deny each other. We cannot pur­ sue moral ends without causing a split within oursel­ ves, without offending the instincts and the penchants that are most deeply rooted in our bodies. There is no moral act that does not imply a sacrifice, for, as Kant has shown, the law of duty cannot be obeyed with­ out humiliating our individual sensitivity (DHN:328). Durkheim thus insisted that living up to the demands of moral and intellectual life requires constant sacrifice of egocentric, purely privatized organic desires. In effect, Durkheim argued that the life of man-in-society-and-culture is made possible only through constant repression of all that is implied in ego­ centricity. • • • • • • • • • • • --52-­ As Durkheim deepened the tension in the inner life of man by insisting that the antinomy between the two halves of human nature is irreconcilable, he came round again to the problem of insatiability, though in a rather different way. Now, man's inner torment comes from his inability to simultan­ eously satisfy both the biological and cultural halves of his inheritance. This antinomy is so deep and so radical that it can never be completely resolved. How can we belong en­ tirely to ourselves, and entirely to others at one and the same time? The ego cannot be something com­ pletely other than itself, for if it were, it would vanish--this is what happens in ecstasy. In order to think we must be, we must have an individuality. On the other hand, however, the ego cannot be entirely and exclusively itself, for, if it were, it would be emptied of all content. If we must be in order to think, then we must have something to think about. To what would consciousness be reduced if it expres­ sed nothing but the body and its states? We cannot live without representing to ourselves the world around us and the objects of every sort which fill it. And because we represent it to ourselves, it enters into us and becomes part of us. Consequent­ ly, we value the world and are attached to it just as we are to ourselves. Something else in us besides our­ selves stimulates us to act (DHN:328). In his own way, Durkheim began to approach the old metaphysical problem of the relations between unity and plurality. For, if "in order to think we must be" (the Cartesian "cogito, ergo sum"), we must have an individuality that is directed both to ourselves and the external world. At the same time, however, Durkheim contended that because of the physical limitations of individual experience, we cannot raise ourselves indepen­ dently and spontaneously to the level of universal validity. Instead, the only path from the eros of the ego to the univer­ salizable logos of the collectivity is to transcend our iso­ lated and limited physical existence through the "hyper-spir­ itual" medium of society, culture, and history. As Durkheim had said earlier: "Only the universal is rational. The parti­ cular and the concrete baffle understanding." We understand only when we think in concepts. But sensory reality is not made to enter the framework of our concepts spontaneously and by itself. It • • --53-­ • resists, and, in order to make it conform, we have to do some violence to it, we have to submit it to sorts of laborious operations that alter it so that the mind can assimilate it. However, we never com­ pletely succeed in mastering our sensations and in translating them completely into intelligible terms. They take on a conceptual form only by losing that which is most concrete in them, that which causes them to speak to our sensory beings and to involve • it in action: and in so doing, they become something fixed and dead. Therefore, we cannot understand things without partially renouncing a feeling for life, and we cannot feel that life without renouncing the under­ standing of it (DHN:329). • Shades of Simmel! We now discover that, according to Durkheim, • the deeper dimensions of the tragic paradox of the duality of human nature come not merely from the need for higher human levels to repress lower, non-human levels, but from the al­ most fatal double-bind that man finds himself in, especially • in terms of the mounting costs of this self-inflicted violence. Inevitably, as we embark upon the journey from our own concrete particularity to collective universality and rationality, the necessarily increasing abstraction means that the feeling for • the vital flow of life itself is lost. As with Simmel's view of the "tragedy of culture" and the "autonomization of forms" (in Wolff, 1950), sensational life is in continuous motion and process: but the abstract representations that are extern­ alized and lifted out of this continuous flow thereby become frozen, things "fixed and dead." The inner struggle between these two poles of being and becoming is couched here not so • much in terms of the Romantic notion of the inevitably and paradoxical duality between life (Spirit) and death (mechan­ ism), as in terms of the opposition between eros and logos. I repeat: the real source of Durkheim'~tr'agic vision of the • human condition lies in an inescapable paradox: it is not sim­ • ply~~~t collective and public side of man must do violence to the organic eqo, but rather that in this necessary process the original feeling for the flow and ebb of the life-process itself is lost. Ultimately, both ego and person--or eros and logos--stand clearly for eternally valuable and necessary, though eternally opposed, poles in the "double-bind" that is • • --54-­ • • • • • • • • • human existence. To emphasize this feeling of the tragedy inherent in the human condition, Durkheim characteristically returned to one of its preeminent expressions in his own cultural tradi­ tions--namely, to Pascal's formula that man is both "angel and beast." Thus, Durkheim's original dualism takes on increas­ ingly diverse and profound overtones. To Durkheim, human real­ ity is fundamentally conflictual; man is caught, by his very constitution, in a tragic "double-bind." The duality in the inner life of man means that suffering is rooted in our very nature. This inner contradiction is one of the characteristics of our nature. According to Pascal's formula, man is both "angel and beast," and not exclusively one or the other. The result is that we are never completely in accord with ourselves for we cannot follow one of our natures without causing the other to suffer. Our joys can never be pure; there is always some pain mix­ ed with them; for we can never simultaneously satisfy the two beings that are within us (DHN:329). It is important to emphasize that, by this point, the key prob­ lem of insatiability had been reformulated, and was now rooted in the~ernal contradiction and inner division between the two halves of our nature, rather than in simply burdening one side --the organic--with the blame. The inability of man to attain inner peace and harmony is due to the fact that man is "double" and "divided against himself." Indeed, this image of reality as inherently conflictual--isn't this what is meant by a philoso­ phy of dualism? Granting that "we are double," that "we are the reali­ zation of an antinomy," that "man is divided against himself," that "man is a monster of contradictions" who "can never sat­ isfy himself," Durkheim then asked rhetorically: "But where do this duality and antinomy come from?" Now, Durkheim's drive to reformulate moral philosophy and action in purely positiv­ ist and sociologistical terms is clearly evident here when he insisted that, contrary to most contemporary sociologists (esp­ ecially those who consider themselves "positivists" and "pure social scientists"), it is the prime task of the science of man (or as Durkheim once called it anthroposociologie), to • • --55-­ • account for this wrenching dualism of human nature, the prime mover in human action. Durkheim first set aside both the oppo­ • sing monistic versions of the two dominant modern cultural traditions as eliminating the problem rather than meeting its complexities. Further, he dismissed the ontological argument, dating at least from Plato, which was the source of the notion • of homo duplex--namely, that two opposed worlds of being meet in man--spirit and matter, heaven and earth. To Durkheim, the old ontological metaphor recognized but did not explain the root origins of this opposition. Of course, it was just this type of metaphysical argument, embedded especially in the Catholic Cultural Tradition, which served as the source of much of the very moral philosophy which tacitly nourished • Durkheim, and which also helped fuel the positivists' centur­ • ies-long revolt. As he set aside the last major contender-­ the neo-Kantian position which simply assigned these two oppo­ sing activities to opposing human faculties--Durkheim made the following crucial point. Contrary to all these contending po­ sitions, the "human spirit," far from being a generic given, must be considered a key sociocultural historical construc­ tion (see also the last chapter in this Book). • We have generally thought of man's mental nature as a sort of ultimate given which needs not to be accoun­ ted for. Thus we tend to believe that all has been said and done when we attach such and such a fact, whose causes we are seeking, to a human faculty. But why should the human spirit, which is--to put i brief­ • ly--only a system of phenomena, be outside and above explanation? We know that our organism is the product of a genesis; why should it be otherwise with our psy­ chic cons~itution (DHN:334)? We see enunciated here a critical substantive principle of • Durkheim's sociology (which we shall explore), one that would be developed later on by Marcel Mauss in his profound lecture "Une Categorie de l'esprit humain: la notion de personne, celIe de 'moi'" (translated by L. Krader, 1968). Sociocultural • analysis generally, and even philosophical discourse, would greatly improve if this critical principle were more widely understood. • II • --56-­ • • • • • • • • • • After setting aside competing explanations, Durkheim moved to anchor the origins of ego and person in the univer­ sal opposition between the sacred and the profane. The duality of our nature is thus only a particular case of that division of all things into the sacred and the profane that is the foundation of all reli­ gions, and it must be explained on the basis of the same principles (DHN:335). Just as the profane can only be defined by contrast with the sacred, so too the organic ego is defined in 09Position to a category of the human spirit--the socioculturally constructed person. As religion is double, so also the two poles of moral and intellectual existence echo within each of us. It is not without reason, therefore, that man feels him­ self to be double: he actually is double. There are in him two classes of states of consciousness that differ from each other in origin and nature, and in the ends toward which they aim. One class merely expresses our organisms and the objects to which they are most direct­ ly related. Strictly individual, the states of conscious­ ness of this class connect us only with ourselves, and we can no more detach them from us than we can detach ourselves from our bodies. The states of consciousness of the other class, on the contrary, come to us from so­ ciety; they transfer society into us and connect us with something that surpasses us. Being collective, they are impersonal; they turn us toward ends that we hold in com­ mon with other men; it is through them and them alone that we can communicate with others. It is, therefore, quite true that we are made up of two parts, and are like two beings, which, although they are closely associated, are composed of very different elements and orient us in opposite directions ••.. In brief, this duality corresponds to the double existence that we lead concurrently: the one purely individual and rooted in our organisms, the other social and nothing but an extension of society. The origin of the antagonism that we have described is evident from the very nature of the elements involved in it. The conflicts .•. are between the sensations and the sensory appetites, on the one hand, and the intellectual and moral life, on the other; and it is evident that pas­ sions and egoistic tendencies derive from our individual constitutions, while our rational activity--whether theo­ retical or practical--is dependent on social causes (DHN: 337-38). Finally, Durkheim returned to the theme of the suffering inherent in the duality of the human condition. Pain and pro­ • --57-­ longed inner anguish are the lot of mankind, split as we are between the forever conflicting claims of our physical and • moral selves. Durkheim's "social reality principle" insisted on an inevitable clash of social forces with the unencumbered ego. As with all split loyalties, the impossibility of simul­ taneously satisfying both halves of human nature is the cause of perpetual tension and man's endemic inner torment. • The painful character of the dualism of human nature is explained by this hypothesis. There is no doubt that if society were only the natural and spontaneous development of the individual, these two parts of our­ selves would harmonize and adjust to each other without clashing and without friction: the first part, since it is only the extension and, in a way, the complement j. of the second, would encounter no resistance from the latter. In fact, however, society has its own nature, and consequently, its requirements are quite different from those of our nature as individuals: the interests of the whole are not necessarily those of the part. Therefore, society cannot be formed or maintained with­ out our being required to make perpetual and costly sac­ rifice. Because society surpasses us, it obliges us to surpass ourselves~ and to surpass itself, a being must, • to some degree, depart from its nature--a departure that does not take place without causing more or less painful tensions (DHN:338). Moreover, as society and culture grow increasingly complex ) and differentiated, and thus, the need for rationality and • universality in thought and action grows correspondingly, man's, "double-bind" deepens, and inner tensions increase. Human malaisecontinues to increase. The great religions of modern man are those which insist the most on the • existence of the contradictions in the midst of which we struggle. These continue to depict us as tormented and suffering, while only the crude cults of inferior societies breathe forth and inspire a joyful confidence. For what religions express is the experience through which humanity has lived, and it would be very surpri­ • sing if our nature became unified and harmonious when we feel that our discords are increasing (DHN:331-32). In many ways, Durkheim's tragic vision of life was close to Weber's, for both, in their most prophetic, pessimistic, and profound moments, saw that each of us must finally choose among • the "inner demons holding the very fibers of our lives" which to devote our life-energies. The choice, never easy, always painful, must be made in full awareness both of the violence • • --58-­ • • • • • • • • • we do to the lesser, though more vital, half of our nature, and the growing historical necessity of such asceticism. Both Durkheim and Weber demanded that ego and eros give way to log­ os and the morally disciplined person if western civilization was to survive. We must do violence to certain of our strongest inclin­ ations. Therefore, since the role of the social being in our single selves will grow ever-more important as history moves ahead, it is wholly improbable that there will ever be an era in which man is require to resist himself to a lesser degree, an era in which we can live a life that is easier and less full of tension. To the contrary, all evidence compels us to expect our effort in the struggle between the two beings within us to in­ crease with the growth of civilization (DHN:339). A stark vision indeed--the inner anguish of the constitution­ al duality of human nature deepened by historical necessity. In the face of this "theodicy," it was precisely the stead­ fast refusal to endorse any of the myriad and competing "therapuetics" abroad in their own days which counseled "trascendence ll and diverse modes of "jumping out of your skin" which marks both Durkheim and Weber as moral realists, and ultimately as tragic figures. In one of those hidden i­ ronies of history, wherein the gods take revenge on those ti­ tans who challenge them, both Durkheim and Weber, from oppo­ sing sides of the first European catastrophe of the twentieth \ cer.tury, felt compelled, each in his own way, to issue calls for the values of logos--universality and rationality--and to stand steadfastly by their fates, and simply IImeet the demands of the day." Weber died within a year or so after the end of World War Ii Durkheim died in 1917, it has been said, of a broken heart. • --59-­ • CHAPTER THREE CONSCIENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS • • It is not at all true that between science on the one hand, and morals and religion on the other, there ex­ ists that sort of antinomy which has so frequently been admitted, for the two forms of human activity really come from one and same source (EF:494). The French word conscience is ambiguous, embracing the meanings of the two English words "conscience" and "consciousness." Thus, the "beliefs and senti­ ments" comprising the conscience collective are, on one hand, moral and religious, and, on the other, • cognitive (Lukes, 1973:4). The intimate relations between rationales of conscience and the structures of consciousness constitute one of the most fundamental, and least recognized, of Durkheim's postu­ • lates. The very terms employed by Durkheim here reveal his deep­ est intentions, for the French word conscience, as with the Latin conscientia, conveys both the meanings of moral decision and intellectual understanding. This fruitful ambiguity is re­ • tained today in the two meanings of "right and wrong" in the cognitive and moral senses. Thus, although the terms conscience and consciousness are separated in English, in Durkheim's basic sociocultural theory the logics of moral decision and the lo­ • gics of intellectual understanding are always and everywhere intertwined. As we approach the significance of this fruitful ambi­ guity, we would do well to remember that Durkheim declared that • society is itself a moral phenomena, or more precisely, socie­ ty is the only moral phenomenon. Correspondingly, morality is preeminently social. Moreover, these reciprocal relations ! • between morality and society are evolutionarily grounded. With these commitments in mind, we can begin to perceive the central­ ity in Durkheim's system of the crucial relation between social • • --60-­ • • forms and the forms of conscience and consciousness. Indeed, the notions of conscience and consciousness as a closely in­ terrelated pair constitute key links in Durkheim's system be­ tween different historical societies and different phenomeno­ logies of the person, on the one hand, and Durkheim's corres­ ponding theses on the nature, origin, and development of mor­ ality, religion, and knowledge on the other. • If we continue to translate away the fruitful ambiguity of Durkheim's usage of that seminal French word conscience--I mean its dual meanings of morality and cognition--we shall al­ • so continue to forfeit the key to unlocking the seemingly par­ adoxical relations which Durkheim posited between his sociolo­ gy of religion, knowledge, and morality. Far too often we ap­ proach Primitive Classification or The Elementary Forms, for • example, in terms of a rather simple equation between social structure and the basic forms of thought and religion. Whether or not they agree, most observers seem to grasp Durkheim's no­ tion that the source of key collective representations embod­ • ied in religious ritual and the categories of logical thought are to be found originally in the social morphological struc­ ture of the human group. However, what perennially mystifies is this: even granting their common origins, why should Durk­ • heim so insistently intertwine his sociologies of religion, ~ morality, and knowledge? Once one begins, however, to perceive the intimate interrelations between cognition and morality suggested by the connotations of the French term employed by Durkheim here, the paradox begins to evaporate. Alpert re­ minds us: "The Elementary Forms, it should not be forgotten, was originally entitled "The Elementary Forms of Thought and of Religious Life" (1939:55). Wallwork has also noted that • • " ... Durkheim associates epistemological and phenomenologi­ cal connotations with the collective conscience, which ena­ bles him to employ this concept in explaining moral obliga­ tion" (1972:37). In sum, in Durkheim's sociologistical sys­ tem, conscience--in terms of the moralities of thought--and consciousness--in terms of the logics of action--often follow • • --61-­ one from the other, while both, in turn, are linked with the underlying social morphological substratum of the human group. • Indeed, Durkheim's central insight that the rationales of conscience and the structures of consciousness are always and everywhere intertwined constitutes, in my opinion, a high­ ly illuminating and significant tool for sociocultural analy- ~ sis. Even more, when seen in comparative and historical terms, Durkheim's rule suggests the following heuneneutical canon: in general, fundamental changes in the grounds of conscience often precede fundamental changes in the structures of con­ • sciousness. In short, tracing basic shifts in the grounds and structures of legitimate moral authority and intellectual de­ • cision move to the center stage of in-depth sociocultural in­ quiry. • Strangely, none of those prominent sociologists who read Durkheim in the original French, and then published noteworthy accounts of his thought in English, were apparently able to successfully shake loose from the translators perennial diffi­ • culty. Neither Parsons (who chose to leave conscience untrans­ lated), nor Alpert, nor Foskett, nor Bellah, nor Nisbet, nor LaCapra, nor Poggi, nor Wallwork, nor Giddens, nor Lukes, cap­ italized on the crucial ambiguity of Durkheim's intertwined no­ • tions of conscience and consciousness to illuminate his system, and especially his closely interrelated sociologies of religion, morality, and knowledge. Even so perspicacious an observer as Steven Lukes, the foremost contemporary intellectual biographer • of Durkheim, has apparently not yet perceived the crucial sig­ nificance of Durkheim's usage of this ambiguity. Lukes, as with many others, unfortunately treats this double meaning as simply yet another difficulty encountered in translation. • There is the further difficulty of translation from French to English. Sometimes what is perfectly intel­ ligible in French cannot be directly translated into seemingly equivalent English words (such as conscience and "conscience") .... The French words mae out ~ dif­ • ferent conceptual structure from the Engll.sh; they make different discriminations, and carry different presup­ positions and connotations*(1973:3 . Perhaps because of the long-standing opposition between science • I I. --62-­ and religion, or the investment in the fact-value distinction, or perhaps because of the drive to establish sociology as an • autonomous science, free from lingering ethical or philosophi­ cal entanglements, or for whatever reasons, none of these main­ line sociologists successfully brought our attention to the po­ • . tential significance of Durkheim's thesis of the intimate link­ ages between structures of conscience and consciousness. Rather, • from the point of view of their own special preoccupations, it has been a medieval historian turned sociologist, a famous psychologist of child development, and a cultural anthropolo­ gist, who, having turned to Durkheim for illumination, discover­ • ed there these crucial insights. Let us now briefly explore this curious turn of events. I first learned the significance of the intimately inter­ twined Durkheimian notions of conscience and consciousness from • a former medieval historian turned sociologist--name1y, Benjamin Nelson. Nelson has specialized in precisely these areas of un­ raveling the tangled relations between structures of conscience and consciousness, and, in turn, the significance of fundamental shifts in these structures as anchors of cultural complexs and civilizations, all seen incbmparative and historical perspective. Nelson, who was sensitized to the significance of these double connotations by his knowledge of their linkage in medieval cul­ ture, was led to Durkheim's insights through the medium of Jean Piaget. Following a maxim of Piaget based on Durkheim, I have • called the schemas the "moralities of thought" and the "logics of action." Since the Middle Ages, both of these structures have regularly rested upon a single hinge, namely, the notion of conscientia which had the combined sense in Latin and other languages of "con­ science" and "consciousness" (1972:105). • In another, earlier work, Nelson also acknowledged: I owe the phrase (the"moralities of thought and the lo­ gics of action") to Jean Piaget (1948) who derived it by extending a notion of Durkheim" "Logic is the moral­ ity of thought, morality is the logic of action" (1968: • 161) . Indeed, Piaget's very turn of phrase here suggests the potency of Durkheim's insights, for normally we associate morality with action, and logic with thought. However, under Durkheim's • --63-­ • • • • • • • • • influence, Piaget profoundly inverted these terms and spoke instead of the central "moralities of thought and logics of action" which lie at the very bases of society, culture, and personality. The anthropologist, Paul Bohannan, has rightly empha­ sized the theoretical potency of Durkheim's ambiguous language. From his anthropological perspective, Bohannan illuminates the several meanings of Durkheim' s key term con3cience in re­ lation to the notions of culture and generic sociocultural process. Of Durkheim, Bohannan remarks: ..• Perhaps no social scientist ever used ambiguity with better effect .... It is plain that Durkheim meant at least three things by conscience, and it was this very triunity that allowed him to think with the con­ cept. The first ambiguity is inherent in the French language. English requires two words--"conscience" and "consciousness"--to translate conscience. That these two form a single concept in French means that, for all French sociologists, internalized sanctions are amalgamated •.. with awareness of the social mil­ ieu. This factor is not unique with Durkheim.••. Ra­ ther, attention must be paid to a more subtle ambi­ guity, one that cannot be untangled with reference to a dictionary. Conscience was used by Durkheim to mean the instrument of awareness, a meaning which is more or less equivalent to the English "consciousness." But the third and more important meaning of conscience is "that of which someone is (or many persons are) a­ ware" and the only suitable English term for this no­ tion is the anthropologists'term "culture." Thus, the French term conscience means three things: internali­ zed sanctions, awareness, and perceived culture (1960: 78-79) . Bohannan then proceeds to make the crucial observation that Durkheim's simultaneously resonating conscience also implied both the noun and verb-like aspects of culture. This linkage between the notions of conscience and consciousness and cul­ tural process in terms of collective representations as both object and process is, I agree with Bohannan, a crucial per­ spective that must be recaptured by the human sciences. To read Durkheim's concepts of representation and conscience as interaction of a subject and an ob­ ject is to misunderstand them. Their vital charact­ eristic is a blending of subject and object into a single unit. In Durkheim's theory, something which • • --64-­ we view as an interaction between two processes is analyzed as a single process .... Durkheim focussed his attention on the verbal connection between them: • the "knowing" or, as he called it, the process of representation .... This ambiguous assimilation of the knowing instrument and the known thing--of con­ sciousness and culture--into a single concept was vital to Durkheim's thought .... American and Eng­ lish interpretations of Durkheim ... have separa­ • ted the two substantive elements which Durkheim in­ tended to leave conjoined. In the separation, the processual (or verb-like) concept has disappeared (l96 0: 79-80) . Bohannan's insights into the processual aspects of Durkheim's • theory of generic sociocultural process are critical to under­ standing how the latter related social morphological intensi­ ties to the emergence of collective representations as crystal­ lizations both of group self-awareness and normative discipline . • ... the collective representation is both a thing perceived and a perceiving agent; one can say that it is a "perceiving." Seen in this way, the mass of collective representations--of "perceivings"--be­ comes the cOl.lective conscience (l960: 82) . • Bohannan's argument that Durkheim's seemingly simple no­ tions of conscience and representation imply both verb and noun­ like dimensions is reinforced by Steven Lukes. Lukes notes two related ambiguities built into Durkheim's concept of represent­ ation collective which have great interpretive significance. In the first place, the concept representation refers both to the mode of thinking, conceiving, or perceiv­ ing, and to that which is thought, conceived, or per­ ceived. And second, the representation is collective both in its origin, determining its mode or form, and • in its reference or object (it is also, of course, col­lective in being common to the members of a society or group). Thus, Durkheim wanted to say both that repre­ sentations collectives are socially generated and that they refer to, and are in some sense "about" society. (This duality is clearest in his sociology of religion • and in his sociology of morality) (l973:6-7). Thus, Durkheim's fundamental sociocultural theory presents us with a series of fruitful ambiguities in relation to the semi­ nal terms--conscience, representation, and collective.Truly a • profound ambiguity, and a profound contribution to the building of the human sciences! • • - .... 65-­ • • • • • • • • • How difficult this process of recapturing the simul­ taneously intertwined meanings implied in Durkheim's usage of his paradigmatic terms can be gauged by the long odyssey of Durkheim's foremost American interpreter--Talcott Parsons. While Parsons wisely avoided the imputation of the "group mind" specter to Durkheim's term collective conscience (1949:309) by leaving it untranslated, nevertheless, he also tended to split the two meanings of conscience and assigned them to separate phases in Durkheim's intellectual development (eg. see 1949: 309). After the great series of intellectual breakthroughs which Parsons imputes to Durkheim's development, conscience was said to take on a very different meaning. It involves a radical shift of emphasis from the ori­ ginal definition and context of use of the collective conscience. The latter concept originally referred to a body of beliefs and sentiments held in common; the collectiveness of it consisted in the "in commonness." Now the collectiveness consists in the nature of the reality exterior to the individual to which the indi­ vidual's "representations" refer. It is not a subject­ ive community of beliefs and sentiments which is the source of solidarity, but rational orientation to the same set of phenomena in the environment of action, an "objective" source of uniformities (1949:360). So intent was Parsons on forcing Durkheim into the mold of "Social System" thinking that it took over thirty years for him to begin to revise his notion of the split between the moral and cognitive meanings of Durkheim's seminal term conscience. In his 1973 article "Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Reli­ gious Life Revisited," Parsons acknowledges, in contrast, to his earlier position, that the "cognitive and moral elements" im­ plied in Durkheim's usage of the term conscience belonged togeth­ er from the very beginning. "The essential thing is the inclu­ sion of both (cognitive and moral) references in the same form­ ula, not the shift in interest from the cognitive to the moral" (1973:164). Although still not directly perceiving the simple but fruitful ambiguity in the French meanings of conscience, which suggested Durkheim's fundamental insight that structures of conscience and consciousness are always and everywhere inti­ mately intertwined, Parsons acknowledged his earlier ambivalence • I • --66-­ • • • • • • • • • toward Durkheim's insistent linkage of his sociologies of religion, morality, and knowledge. I had not been fully aware of the extent to which the progression from the Cartesian conception of the fact­ icity of the milieu social to the idea of constraint by moral authority was not simply progress from a more to a less elementary theoretical perspective, but was the framework within which both conceptions carne to be combined in a unique manner. The realization that this is the case has, I think, been basically depen­ dent on the conception that much of Durkheim's thought was couched at the level of the general theory of act­ ion and not only of the social system (1973:163). It is revealing, however, that even as Parsons plods closer to this important insight, he still insists on placing it within his own very special framework. Parsons implies that this last great breakthrough in understanding Durkheim's doctrine could only have corne through his own convoluted theory of generic hu­ man action. But, as we have just discovered, several theorists before Parsons clearly recognized the great significance of Durkheim's multiple meanings of his crucial terms conscience, representation, and collective. Perhaps they made this import­ ant discovery because they simply attended to the multiple mean­ ings of the words in themselves, instead of allowing themselves to be sidetracked by Parsons' great (and greatly misleading) intellectual drama. Indeed, this episode serves as an object lesson in the history of science--namely, how the profundity of a great think­ ers' paradigms can be distorted by the powerfully wrought, and widely pervasive, intellectual drama of an influentially situa­ ted theorist (and intellectual broker) like Talcott Parsons. This irony is compounded here because the famous secondary inter­ preter entertained the best of intentions as a would-be rescuer of the original founding fathers' much-maligned theories. Fur­ ther, it demonstrates how even ardent followers of the pioneer could not perceive the full depths of the original doctrine, except through the colored-glasses of a prime secondary inter­ preter (see much of Lukes, 1973, for instance). Finally, it re­ veals how only a small hanif ul of relative "outsiders, II with little investment in the dominant perspective, boldly returned • I I • --67-­ • to the original source itself, and discovered there meanings which had long been slighted. • The ironies of history are such that it may not be possible, at this time (see McCloskey, 1976b) to fully judge the significance of the ways in which Parsons retarded or ad­ vanced the understanding of Durkheim's contributions to the human sciences. In any case, the preceding case-study reveals a typical sociocultural process--in any renaissance, new en­ ergies are generated and new paths blazed by those bold e­ • nough to return to the full dimensions of the original sour­ ces themselves. And, in this case, Durkheim's intentions and potential significance are clearly indicated by the double meanings conveyed by the key terms conscience, representation, • and collective. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • --68-­ DURKHEIM'S CAUSAL MODEL: SUBSTRUCTURAL SOCIAL MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES AND SUPER­ STRUCTURAL COLLECTIVELY REPRESENTATIONAL PROCESSES Besides the social ways of being, there are the social ways of doing; besides the morphulogical phenomena, there are the functional or physiological phenomena (1960:362). Structure itself is encountered in becoming (1960:362). In respect to morphology, sociology must seek the ele­ mentary group which gave rise to ever-more compound groupings; in respect to physiology, it must trace the elementary functional phenomena which, in combining with one another, have formed the progressively more complex phenomena that have developed in the course of evolution (1960:374). One of the rules we have followed is that, in studying social phenomena .•. we take care not to leave them in the air, but always to relate them to a definite substra­ tum ••. a human group occupying a determinate portion of geographically representable space (1971:809). The progress of the division of labor is in direct ratio to the moral or dynamic density of society (DL:257). If we specialize, it is not to produce more, but it is to enable us to live in new conditions of existence that have been made for us (DL:275). With animals, the organism assmilates social facts to it, and, stripping them of their special nature, trans­ forms them into biological facts. Social life is mater­ ialized. In man, on the contrary, and particularly in higher societies, social causes substitute themselves for organic causes. The organism is spiritualized (DL:346-7). Liberty itself is the product of regulation. Far from being antagonistic to social action, it results from it . ••. it is a conquest of society over nature. [Liberty] can realize itself progressively insofar as man raises himself above things and makes law for them, thus depri­ ving them of their fortuitous, absurd, amoral character; that is, insofar as he becomes a social being. For man can escape nature only by creating another world where he dominates nature. That world is society (DL:386-7). • • • • • • • • • • • -.-69-­ Society is also of nature and yet dominates it. Not only do all the forces of the universe converge in society, but they also form a new synthesis which surpasses in richness, complexity, and power of action all that went into it. In a word, society is nature arrived at a higher point in its development, concentrating all its energies to surpass, as it were, itself (SP:97). Society ... is above all a composition of ideas, beliefs, and sentiments of all sorts which realize themselves through individuals .... Society is the field of an in-· tense intellectual and moral life with a wide range of in­ fluence. From the actions and reactions between its in­ dividuals arises an entirely new mental life which lifts our minds into a world of which we could not have the faintest idea had we lived in isolation (SP:59). If left to themselves, individual consciousnesses are closed to each other; they can communicate only by means of signs which express their internal states (EF:262). Collective representations •.. presuppose that minds act and react upon one another ...• They are the product of these actions and reactions (EF:263). Human sentiments are intensified when affirmed collec­ tively (EF:440). A society can neither create itself nor recreate itself without at the same time creating an ideal (EF:470). The principal social phenomena, religion, morality, law, economics and aesthetics, are nothing more than systems of values and hence of ideals. Sociology moves from the beginning in the field of the ideal (SP:96). For a society to become conscious of itself, and maintain at the necessary degree of intensity the sentiments which it thus attains, it must assemble and concentrate itself (EF: 4 70) . ••. collective representations .•. presuppose that minds act and react upon one another; they are the products of these actions and reactions which are themselves possible only through material intermediaries. These latter do not confine themselves to revealing the mental state with which they are associated; they aid in creating it (EF: 263) . •.. without symbols, social sentiments could have only a precarious existence ...• Social life, in all its aspects and in every period of its history, is made possible only through a vast symbolism (EF:263-4). The rite serves ••. to revivify the most essential ele­ ments of the collective consciousness. Through it, the group periodically renews the sentiments which it has of itself and of its unity (EF:420). • • • • • • • • • • • --70-­ The ideas and sentiments that are elaborated by a collec­ tivity ••• are invested, by reason of their origin, with an ascendancy, and an authority that cause the particular individuals who think and believe in them to represent them in the form of moral forces that dominate and sus­ tain them (DHN:335). The real characteristic of religious phenomena is that they always suppose a bipartite division of the whole universe, known and unknown, into two classes which em­ brace all that exists, but which radically exclude each other. Sacred things are those which the interdictions protect and isolate; profane things, those to which these interdictions are applied and which must remain at a dis­ tance from the first. Religious beliefs are the represen­ tations which express the nature of sacred things and the relations which they sustain, either with each other or with profane things. Finally, rites are the rules of con­ duct which prescribe how a man should comport himself in the presence of these sacred objects. When a certain num­ ber of sacred things sustain relations of coordination or subordination with each other in such a way as to form a system having a certain unity .•• the totality of these beliefs and their corresponding rites constitutes a reli­ gion (EF:56). All known religions have been systems of ideas which tend to embrace the universality of things, and to give us a complete representation of the world (EF:165) • ••• the men of the clan and the things which are classi­ fied in it form by their union a solid system, all of whose parts are united and vibrate sympatheitcally (EF:17~. Religions are the primitive way in which societies become conscious of themselves and their history. They are in the social order what sensation is in the individual (PECM:160). In the present day just as much as in the past, we see so­ ciety creating sacred things out of ordinary ones ~F:244). There is something eternal in religion which is destined to survive all the particular symbols in which religious thought has successively enveloped itself. There can be no society which does not feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and the collective ideas which makes its unity and its personality (EF:274-5). Collective thought transforms everything it touches. It fuses natural orders and combines contraries; it reverses .•. the natural hierarchy of being, it eliminates differ­ ences and differentiates between what is similar. In a word, it substitutes for the world revealed to us by the senses, a quite different world which is nothing other than the projection of the ideal it constructs (SP:94). • • --71-­ • Preface. Contrary to prejudicial portrayals of him as a hy- \ postatizing or Platonizing "social realist," the central rule '1 of the Durkheim school was to always anchor analysis of social facts in a social substratum. Indeed, Durkheim's dualistic pas­ sion extended to his causal model, for he always linked super­ • structural collectively representational (symbolic) processes with substructural social morphological processes. The prime link between the "material" lower-story and the "ideal" upper­ storyi"Ei'moral" or "dynamic density." When a "critical mass" was • reached, there occurred a social implosion, cultural energies were generated and released, and egos became moralized and transformed into persons. Conscience and consciousness are a­ wakened, and society, culture, and persons are born. Collect­ • ive representations symbolize group self-awareness. Such the­ ses form the core of Durkheim's central causal model. Now, while Durkheim's explanatory framework was processual through and through, since much of this section shall necessarily focus • on The Elementary Forms, we shall here be concerned mainly with micro-interactional processes, leaving Durkheim's very im­ portant macro-evolutionary concerns for succeeding chapters. Now, it has not been sufficiently emphasized that Durk­ • heim's key explanatory model combined, in a rather unique way, the two central divisions of sociology--I mean "social morpho­ logy" and "social physiology." Consciously utilizing organic metaphors, Durkheim described these two basic divisions in • the following terms: Besides the social ways of being, there are the social ways of doing; besides the morphological phenomena, there are the functional or physiological phenomena • (1960:362) • The composition of society consists in certain combin­ ations of people and things which by necessity are con­ • nected in space. The explanatory analysis of this sub­ stratum, however, should not be confused with that of the social life which builds on it. The way in which society emerges fully formed is one thing; the manner in which it acts is another. These are realities of two kinds, so different that they cannot be treated by the same procedures but require separate investiga­ tions. Consequently, the study of the first forms a • • --72-­ • • • • • • • • • • special, though fundamental, branch of sociology. We have here a distinction that is analogous to that which can be observed in all the sciences of nature. Chemistry, the study of the manner in which bodies are formed, stands besides physics, the study of the phenomena that are enacted by various bodies. Next to physiology, which seeks the laws of life, stands ana­ tomy or morphology, which investigates the structure of living things, the manner of their formation, and the conditions controlling it (1960:360). In regard to each basic division of the sociological field, Durkheim attempted to specify rules for understanding both the peculiar constitution of each sphere of social life, and the relations of one to the other. In respect to morphology, sociology must seek the ele­ mentary group which gave rise to ever-more compound groupings; in respect to physiology, it must trace the elementary functional phenomena which, in combining with one another, have formed the progressively more complex phenomena that have developed in the course of evolution (1960:374). Against Comte's (and perhaps Saint-Simon's) somewhat similar designation of the main branches of sociological in­ quiry into "social statics" and "dynamics," Durkheim counter­ posed his own processual approach to the morphological and physiological aspects of society. This branch of sociology [social morphology] is ... not purely a science of statics. Consequently, we do not think it proper to use this word: "static" poorly des­ cribes the view of society which is considered here. It is not a question of looking at society arrested at a given moment by abstraction (as has sometimes been said), but of analyzing its formation and accounting for it. Undoubtedly, the phenomena that have to do with structure have something more stable about them than have functional phenomena, but there are only differ­ ences of degree between these two orders of fact. Structure itself is encountered in becoming, and one cannot illustrate-rt except by pursuing this process of becoming. It forms and dissolves continually; it is life arrived at a certain ~asure of consolidation; to disconnect it from the lif~A~ch it derives or from that which it determines is equivalent to dissociating things that are inseparable* (1960:362). Since I shall later emphasize the importance of Durkheim's pro­ cessual view of social morphology, I now merely note that, just --------------------------_.­ • • I. • • • • • • • --73-­ as Bohannan noted the processual aspect of Durkheim's key terms conscience and representation, so too I must empha­ size that it is misleading to attempt (eg. Bellah, 1973: xiv­ xv) to summarize Durkheim's two analytical modes in terms of so-called "structural" and "functional" approaches, since we have Durkheim's own word that even "structure is itself encoun­ tered in becoming." Of course, Durkheim's well-known designa­ tion for all the sub-fields of social physiology--including religious, juridical, economic, linguistic, and esthetic so­ ciology (eg. see Alpert, 1939:5l}--was based on the noti.on of "collective representations" as cultural symbolic forms. Now, this same explanatory model--the anchoring of social physiological or sociocultural symbolic processes in their underlying social morphological substratum--marks all of Durk­ heim's work and that of his school. Yet, for some reason, his essential logic here remains relatively obscure to the present day. Some prestigious interpreters (eg. Parsons, 1949; Nisbet, 1965) have, by splitting Durkheim's model in two and assign­ ing social morphology to Durkheim's early "positivistic" phase and his concern with "collective representations" to his later "idealLstic" phase, proposed thereby a radical discon­ tinuity in Durkheim's life-work. Contrary to these and other fateful misconceptions of Durkheim's central causal model, propose that, as a general rule, Durkheim always and everywhere approached social morphological processes as the causal "ma- \ terial" substructure, and "collective representations" as the r social physiological or sociocultural process in the reflected or projected "ideal" superstructure. Almost alone among con­ temporary secondary observers, Lukes (1973) and Giddens have begun to recognize the importance of this dualistic explana­ tory framework. It must be noted,however, that Durkheim's cen­ tral focus was always on the second factor, especially moral and juridical and religious "collective representations" (see also Book Three). Let us now turn to explore in greater detail Durkheim's central causal model as it informs his first and last great works. • I • --74-­ A. Social Morphological Processes • The first great subdivision of Durkheim's sociological system was "social morphology." "We propose to call the sci­ ence that has for its object the study of the material forms of society 'social morphology'" (1960:362). The fundamental ) rule of the Durkheim school was to always anchor analyses of • social facts in their gene~ting material substratum. For in­ stance, late in his career, Durkheim, with the assistance of Mauss, summed up their basic interpretive rule this way: • One of the rules we have followed is that, in studying social phenomena in themselves and by themselves, we take care not to leave them in the air but always to re­ late them to a definite substratum, that is to say, a human group occupying a determinate portion of geograph­ ically representable space (1971:809). In applying his positivistic version of the scientific method to society, Durkheim always sought to anchor his analyses of the type of social facts which instinctively drew his atten­ tion--moral phenomena--in an empirically verifiable material • "social body." Durkheim's positivistic search for empirically determinable entities led him, in direct contrast to those who insisted that Durkheim hypostatized social facts, to embrace social morphological forms and processes as a key constitutive • ground of society and history. • • Social life has various manifestations ... all of them, however, have this in common: they emanate from a group, simple or complex; the group is their substratum.... It is the object most immediately accessible to the socio­ logist because it takes on material forms that we can perceive with the senses (1960:360). Those who do not perceive the seemingly paradoxical connec­ tions between positivist science and French moral philosophy, will probably not understand why Durkheim, although centrally • concerned with the facts of the moral life, should have, none­ theless, taken great care to ground his analyses of these mor­ al facts in existentially--empirically verifiable--"material social bodies." As Durkheim launched ~'Annee sociologique,he took some care to articulate these various subdivisions of sociological • Ie • • • I I I • • • • • • --75-­ inquiry. For instance, I have quoted above from an important programmatic statement "Sociology and Its Scientific Field" first published in 1900 in Italian, and only recently trans­ lated by Kurt Wolff (1960). And in 1898 in ~'Annee sociologi­ que, Durkheim wrote a "Note sur la morphologie sociale." There he argued th~the content of the new synthetic sociological base-line science of social morphology was to be drawn, in part, from a series of existing and overlapping disciplines. Unfortunately, these special sciences pursue their own iso­ ~ed tasks today just as they did in Durkheim's day. The works that treat of these questions actually come from different disciplines. Geography studies the ter­ ritorial forms of states, history traces the evolution of rural or urban groups, demography reviews all that concerni~g the distribution of population, etc. There is, we believe, an interest in pulling these fragmen­ tary sciences from their isolation, and putting them in contact and reuniting them under the same title; they would thus take on the sentiments of their unity 1 (1898:520-21) . And, of course, one of the prime intentions of the Annee cir­ cle was precisely to "pull fragmentary sciences from their iso­ lation," "to give them a greater sentiment of their unity." To this day, ~'Annee sociologique stands out as one of the landmarks in the unity of the social sciences. But in attemp­ ting to generate this new field of social morphology, Durkheim, as always is true, had to contend against existing disciplin­ ary boundaries . ..• because different disciplines exist in separation from each other, and almost without being aware of each other, the way in which they have divided up the social world is not always consistent with the nature of things. Thus, for example, geography and demography (or the sci­ ence of population) until recently remained separate from one another, and are only beginning to become interrela­ ted. However, both study the same subject matter, in or­ der to understand the material substratum of society; for what is it which forms the main substance of society, if it is not social space plus the population which oc­ cupies this space? (in Giddens, 1972a:83). Against geography's "tribal mentality," for instance, Durkheim argued that the new inclusive science of social morphology should: • • --76-­ • • • • • • • • • study not the forms of the earth, but the forms which affect societies and establish them on the earth; that is very different. Without doubt, the courses of water, mountains, and so forth, enter as elements into the constitution of the social substrata; but they are neither the only ones nor the most essential (1898:521) . In contrast to geography, which assumes that the physical and topographical shapes of the earth's surface constitute the ba­ sic "template" to which societies rather passively adapt, Durk­ heim's view of social morphology looked to the ways in which societies shape their own habitats. In short, the roles were reversed in the two disciplines, for man and society were now considered to be active, independent forces in not only shaping their own habitats but in changing the face of the earth it­ self. Elsewhere, Durkheim argued: ... as nations increasingly involve the land in their life and transform it for their own use, it becomes, to the same degree, increasingly difficult to separate them from it. The only thing is, that if in this case there is indeed still a relation of dependence, it is almost the converse of that which is found originally. If now society is linked to the land, this is not be­ cause it has come under its influence, but, on the con­ trary, because it has incorporated it within itself. Far from it being the case that society models itself upon the land, it is the land which bears the imprint of society. Thus it is not the land which explaTnsman, it is man which explains the land; and if it remains important for sociology to be aware of the geographi­ cal factorm this is not because it sheds new light on sociology, but because the former can only be under­ stood in terms of the latter *(in Giddens, 1972a:88). Specifically, Durkheim's new sociological science of social morphology, rooted in this key perception of society's active impact on the constitution of the earth's surface and the way it is variously used, would consider the external forms and internal contents of society in its spatial aspects, in­ cluding the structures of the "built environment," and the movements and interactions of inhabitants of various regions. In short, Durkheim assigned a special program to this new sub-discipline: The social substratum must, above all, be determined in its external form. This external form is chiefly defin­ ed by: (1) the size of the territory; (2) the space • • --77-­ which the society occupies, that is, its peripheral or central position in regard to other "continents" • and the way it is enclosed by other societies, and so on; (3) the form of its frontiers .... In addition to the external form, there is the content, which is, first of all, the total mass of the population in its numerical size and density. Furthermore, there are wi­ thin society secondary groupings which have a mater­ • ial basis, such as villages, cities, districts, and provinces of varying importance. In respect to each of them, there arise various questions which need to be studied in respect to the given collectivity: ex­ tension of habitations, size of cities, and villages, water courses, external enclosures, size and density • of populations, and so on. Finally, every group, as a whole or in part, makes use, according to its needs, of the soil or that part of it that it occupies. Nations surround themselves with fort­ resses or fortified cities, and roads for communication are constructed. The disposition of streets and squares, • the architecture of the houses, and the structure of things made vary from village to town and from the large city to the small one, and so on. Man modifies the so­ cial substratum in a thousand ways, and the resultant differences have great sociological significance because of both the causes on which they depend, and the effects • that they produce (1960:3fO-6l). But as happened with so much else of Durkheim's system of sociology, even though he proposed the nascent sub-disci­ pline of social morphology as an essential foundation for • sociology, and even assigned it a special program subsequent­ ly developed by such an eminent member of his school as Maur­ ice Halbwachs, nonetheless, social morphology is almost for­ gotten today (however, see the exemplary article by L. Schnore • 1958). This crucial aspect of Durkheim's sociology has been either consistently ignored, so that several critics persist in branding him as a Platonic theorizer leaving his hyposta­ tized "collective conscience" dangling in sociological space • (see Book Three), or else leading theorists (eg. Parsons, 194~ Merton, 1934a) mistakenly treat social morphology as a largely "biological factor" which Durkheim later overcame. Again, this sad story represents a salutary lesson in the history of any • science precariously based on highly selective exegesis. • • • • • • • • • • ! --78-­ B. Durkheim'~ Key Link Between Social Morphology and Social Physiology: "Moral Density," Intensity, and Social Energy The key link between substructural social morphologi­ cal processes and superstructural "social physiological" (sym­ bolic) processes was Durkheim's notion of "moral or dynamic densi ty." The very fact that Durkheim would consider "moral" and "dynamic" as almost synonymous reveals a central clue to his linkages of social morphological processes with social physiological or representational processes. Once again, Durk­ heim's dynamic or processual focus moves to center stage (structure itself is encountered in becoming"). For Durkheim was not merely concerned with the size of the society's ter­ ritory, the number of its inhabitants, the forms of its fron­ tiers, the dominant internal "built" forms, and so forth, but more importantly, how the degree of population concentration leads to increased rates of social interaction ("dynamic or moral density"), social intensity, and new rates of social energy, and thus, finally, social change. It is clear that social phenomena vary not only with the nature of the component elements of society but also with their mode of composition; they will espe­ cially be very different according to whethp.r e~ch of the subgroups keeps its local life or is drawn into the general life--in other words, according to their degree of concentration (R:85). Now, besides Schnore (1958), and to a certain extent Lukes and Giddens, Gianfranco Poggi (1972) stands almost alone among contemporary social scientists in understanding the importance in Durkheim's system of the intimate inner links between so­ cial morpholog~ social institutions, collective representa­ tions, and types of personality structure. To better grasp these inner links, especially between population concentration and social energy, we should follow Poggi's observation that the key to physical density, and thus, increased "moral" or ~ynamic" social intensities, is the population/territory ra­ tio (1972:187). The degree of population concentration is only partially a matter of physical density (itself a resultant of the population/territory ratio), and is also partially due to • • • • • • • • • • • --79-­ the existence of key infrastructural transportation and com­ munications networks binding groups together through time and space. Again, the key to the linkage in Durkheimian sociology between social morphological processes and collectively repre­ sentational processes is not simply the volume of people, but rather the rates of sustained social interaction, as Alpert saw many years ago (1939: 90). Population density is important here only insofar as it leads to increased "moral or dynamic density," or in other words, increased social intensity and social energy. By "dynamic density," Durkheim argued, (it) must not be understood the purely physical concentration of the aggregate, which can have no ef­ fect if ... groups of individuals remain separated by a social distance. By it is understood the social con­ centration, of which the size is only the auxilliary and, generally speaking, the consequence. The dynamic density may be defined, the volume being equal, as the function of the number of individuals who are having not only commercial but also social relations, i.e. who not only exchange services or compete with one another, but also live a common life (R:113-l4). Thus, in Durkheim's system, "moral or dynamic density" leads to increased social intensities and energies, and the emergence of a common sociocultural life among previously se­ parated individuals or groups. This proposed causal sequence constitutes one key anchor to almost all the rest of Durkheim's work. Indeed, this notion of greater "moral" densities lead­ ing to greater socic:l,l intensities forms the key link between the material social morphological substratum and the emergence of the crystallized symbolic forms which come to represent this collective effervescence. Long term social morphological changes leading to greater population densities and social in­ tensities also constitute a key causal sequence linking the progressive division of labor, societal evolution, historical change, and the emergence of the notion of the person through­ out history, and so on and so forth. In sum, this generic mi­ cro sociocultural process of increasing social intensities leads, on the macro-evolutionary scale, to all the broad, con­ stitutive, historical processes of the evolution of societies, persons, and moralities, which formed a central preoccupation • • • • • • • • • • • --80-­ in Durkheim's sociological system. Finally, it is very import­ ant to recognize that these intimate linkages between micro and macro-societal processes represent a relatively constant series of sequential equations running throughout all of Durk­ heim's life-work, from The Division of Labor to The Elementary Forms. Let us now briefly explore some of the more important sequential linkages underlying these basic process in all of Durkheim's major works. In The Rules, for instance, Durkheim suggested that heightened degrees of sustained social interaction are neces­ sary to the breakdown of segmental societies, and thus, are a prior condition of the progressive division of labor. Social life can be affected only by the number of those who participate effectively in it. That is why the dy­ namic density of a people is best expressed by the de­ gree of fusion of the social segments. For, if each par­ tial aggregate forms a whole, i.e. a distinct indivi­ duality separated by barriers from the others, the act­ ion of the members, in general, remains localized within it. If, on the contrary, these partial societies •.. tend to be all intermingled within the total society, to that extent is the radius of social life extended (R:114) . Further, Durkheim proposed that, with the continuous extension of the "radius of social life," the division of labor proceeds apace with the progressive effacement of "segmental" types of societies . •.. all growth in the volume and dynamic density of societies modifies profoundly the fundamental condi­ tions of collective existence by rendering social life more intense, by extending the horizon and thought of each individual (R:115) . •.• the progress of the division of labor is in direct ratio to the moral or dynamic density of society (DL: 257) • While space does not allow us here to review all the details of his argument, it is important to note that Durk­ heim's thought moved simultaneously on two different levels-­ the intra-societal and the inter-societal levels. In terms of external relations between formerly distinct societies, Durkheim saw the breakdown of this isolation occuring through the extension of the "radius of social Ii fe," and thus the • • --BI-­ • • • • • • • • • • entering into of sustained and ever-more diverse social rela­ tionships to be a necessary prerequisite for the progressive emergence of new types of societal complexity. The growth of the division of labor is thus brought about by the social segments losing their individual­ ity, the divisions becoming more permeable. In short, a coalescence takes place which makes the combinations possible in the social substance (DL:256). The "progressive effacement of the segmental type of society" and thus, the evolution of ever-more complex social morpholo­ gical structures on the inter-societal level, depends, in turn, on corresponding shifts on the level of the intra-societal division of labor. There is an additional variable intervening between increasing moral density as the primary causal factor and the resulting division of labor. This crucial intervening variable underlying the progressive division of labor is com­ petition. If work becomes divided more as societies become more voluminous and denser, it is not because external cir­ cumstances are more varied, but because the struggle for existence is more acute (DL:266). Following Darwin and other naturalists, Durkheim observed that the competition between members of the same species, or by analogy, between members of the same society, is more in­ tense than inter-specific or inter-societal competition be­ cause the more similar the members, the more intense the com­ petition for similar resources. The result of ever-more intense intra-societal competition is increasing specialization and diversification. ••. in proportion to the segmental character of the social constitution, each segment has its own organs, protected and keptapart from like organs by divisions separating the different segments. But as these divi­ sions are swept away, inevitably like organs are put into contact, battling and trying to supplant one ano­ ther. But, no matter how this substitution is made, it cannot fail to produce advances in the course of specialization (DL: 269) • Against the classical economists who deduced the cause of the division of labor from the innate tendency of human nature to produce more in order to become happier, Durkheim insisted that • --82-­ increasing competition is the key cause behind the progres­ sive specialization. "If we specialize, it is not to produce • more, but it is to enable us to live in new conditions of ex­ istence that have been made for us" (DL:275). • Thus, Durkheim attempted to specify a whole series of sequential equations intervening between moral density and the progressive division of labor. This series of generic so­ ciocultural sequences ran something like this: greater popula­ tion density within a given geographic area (the population/ territory ratio), held together by increasingly comprehensive • and efficient infrastructural transportation and communica­ tions networks, leads to greater degrees of "dynamic density" or sustained increases in "quantity, intensity, and diversity of social relationships." This increased moral density or so­ • cial intensity leads, in turn, to greater competition- for re­ • sources between members of the same society, while this in­ creased int!asocietal competition leads to greater specializa­ tion and occupational differentiation. These typical socioeco­ nomic responses to long term changes in supply and demand lead almost inevitably, as generally agreed, to greater efficiency which leads to greater total productivity, which thus accel­ • erates the progressive division of labor by increasing the potential for population growth, and the extension of key technologies such as the transportation and communications systems. This progressive extension of "the radius of social life" inevitably leads, in turn, to greater social energies • • and socioeconomic and cultural change, which leads onward ~.. and upward, on the general evolutionary level, in a progres- ~ sive self-stimulating feedback cycl~. Certainly, Durkheim posited a most complex process which his readers ignore at their own peril! • When discussing subsequent phenonena which he anchored in the progressive division of labor, it is important, there­ fore, to remember that this factor is really only a secondary one, derived from the primary source of social energy--moral or dynamic density--and the resulting social intensity • • --- ------------------------ • --83-­ • If society, in concentrating, determines the develop­ ment of the division of labor, the latter, in its turn, increases the concentration of society .••. The division of labor remains the derived fact, and, consequently, the advances which it has made are due to parallel ad­ vances of social density .••. That is all we wish to prove (DL: 260) • The division of labor varies in direct ratio with the • volume and density of societies, and, if it progresses in a continuous manner in the course of social develop­ • ment, it is because societies become regularly more dense and generally more voluminous (DL:262). This fundamental social morphological theme of greater densi­ ties and social or moral intensities underlies all the secon­ • dary historical processes concerning the evolution of society, religion, law, science, morality, the person, and so on. It runs as a constant refrain and explanatory model throughout all of Durkheim's works. Indeed, it became the very paradigm • of Illrkheim's sociology; one of its most succinct expressions was the Annee essay by Marcel Mauss and Henri Beuchat in 1906 on seasonal variations in the life of the Eskimos, which was specifically subtitled "Etude de morphologie sociale." • While it is clearly misleading to proclaim a radical discontinuity in Durkheim's career by dividing into positivis­ tic and idealistic phases as Parsons (1949) did, it is true, nonetheless, that Durkheim did increasingly turn his attention • toward establishing the linkages between social morphological processes and the emergence and elaboration of collective re­ presentations. Even Parsons himself, as Pope (1975a) empha­ sized, now acknowledges that he " .•. may have overdone the • periodizing of Durkheim's intellectual development" (1975a: 106), and now agrees instead with Bellah (1973) that there is "an impressive" continuity in Durkheim's work. (See esp­ ecially Giddens, 1970, for convincing refutation of Parsons early thesis of the split between the young and old Durkheim). However, Parsons clearly saw (along with Alpert, 1939, and Foskett, 1939), that Durkheim shifted the main focus of his • 'attention as his career progressed; this remains the valid anchor of Parsons' "stage" thesis. Even though he was mistaken • ---- ..._-------- • • • • • • • • • • -_ --84-­ about the content and dating of Durkheim's developing stages, there is now emerging general agreement that Durkheim's thought increasingly focussed on superstructual symbolic processes, and the autonomization of collective representations (eg. see Giddens, 1971a, 1972a; Lukes, 1973:10, 233-6; Jack Douglas, 1967:45; Wallwork, 1972:48, 113; Parsons, 1975a:l06;Pope,1973: 410, 1975a:112, 114). It is especially important to note Durkheim's continuing concern with elaborating key links between these material and symbolic processes, not only because of the misleading "ideal­ ization" of the "later Durkheim," but also because there is simply no other way of fathoming Durkheim's identification of the moral and the logical with the social. In The Elementary Forms, for example, Durkheim anchored his theory of the social origins, character, and meaning of religion in the alternating slack and intense periods of social interaction among the Aus­ tralian natives. The life of the Australian societies passes alternately through two distinct phases. Sometimes the population is broken up into little groups who wander about inde­ pendently of one another, in their various occupations; each family lives by itself, hunting and fishing ... trying to procure its indispensable food by all the means in its power. Sometimes, on the contrary, the pop­ ulation concentrates and gathers at determined points for a length of time varying from several days to sev­ eral months. This concentration takes place when a clan or a part of the tribe is summoned to the gathering, and on this occasion they celebrate a religious cere­ mony .... These two phases are contrasted with each other in the sharpest way. In the first, economic activity is the preponderating one, and it is generally of a medio­ cre intensity. Gathering the grains of herbs that are necessary for food, or hunting and fishing are not occu­ pat~ons to awaken very lively passions. The dispersed conation in which the society finds itself results in making its life uniform, languishing, and dull. But when a corrobbori a religious celebration takes place, every­ thing changes (EF:245-6). Clearly, to Durkheim, the "very fact of concentration" itself 'acts as an exceptionally powerful stimulant." Social life, in its elementary forms, is portrayed here as constant­ ly alternating between isolated, dispersed, "profane," sub­ sistence activities, on the one hand, and concentrated, col­ • • --85-­ lective, intense, effervescent "sacred" activities. • • • • • • • • • When they are at once come together, a sort of elect­ ricity is formed ex their collecting wh~qurckly transports them to an extraordinary degree of exalta­ tion. Every sentiment expressed finds a place without resistance in all the minds, which are very open to outside impressions; each re-echoes the others, and is re-echoed by the others. The initial impulse thus proceeds, growing as it goes, as an avalanche grows in its advance*(EF:247). So it is in the midst of these effervescent social en­ vironments and of this effervescence itself, that the religious ideas seems to be born (EF:250). And again: For a society to become conscious of itself and main­ tain at the necessary degree of intensity the senti­ ments which it thus attains, it must assemble and con­ centrate itself (EF:470). Indeed, it was these very linkages between the empirically observable material social morphological substratum and col­ lectively symbolic ideal representations, that underlies Durkheim's bold and brilliant attempt to build a positivist scoiology of morality, religion, and knowledge over against the most persistent nemesis of his cultural tradition--name­ ly, the metaphysical and clerical claims of the Catholic Metaphysical-Hierocratic Cultural Tradition. The formation of the ideal world is therefore not an irreducible fact which escapes science, it depends upon conditions which observation can touch; it is a natural product of social life. For a society to become conscious of itself and maintain at the neces­ sary degree of intensity the sentiments which itfuus attains, it must assemble and concentrate itself. Now, this concentration brings about an exaltation of the mental life which takes form in a group of ideal con­ ceptions where is portrayed the new life thus awakened . ... A society can neither create itself nor recreate itself without at the same time creating an ideal (EF: 470) . In short, in Durkheim's developing view, collective efferves­ cence of "social electricity" resulting from imploding "moral densities" and increased social intensities generates those religious, moral, and logical collective representations as externalized symbols of the inward social bond by which society first attains self-consciousness of its existence as a group. • • • • • • • • • • • --86-­ C. "Social Physiology" and "Collective Representations": Durkheim'~ Theory of Generic SocioCultural Process Preface. Given Durkheim's notion of the radical egocentri­ city of the unsocialized organic ego, how is it possible that society and culture ever come to be born? What forces breakthrough the isolation of the organic cage and create the moralized, self-disciplined person? And once born, how is it possible that society and culture should survive beyond the moment? In effect, we are asking: what, precisely, was Durkheim's theory of generic sociocultural process? And what is the role of symbolism in this fundamental sociocultural process? In exploring the first part of Durkheim's central explan­ atory model concerned with the social morphological substra­ tum of society, we discovered that Durkheim's perspective was always processual. Social morphology referred not merely to the spatial demography of the group, but more importantly, to certain key constitutive processes; especially important here were those leading to greater moral densities and social intensities, and the production and release of social ener­ gies. It is precisely these social energies released at such collectively intense times that gives rise to the questions now posed: namely, how are groups born? How do groups come to conceive of themselves as a group? What role do collective representations play in this generic sociocultural process? And, how are these cultural symbols to be related to their continuing structural bases? While Lukes (1973: chapter 10) has given a very useful account of Durkheim's changing esti­ mates of the relation between sub and superstructure (see also Book Three), let us now explore some of these questions in terms of a frontal analysis of Durkheim's causal model. To continue the initial analogy, collective representa­ tions act, in Durkheim's causal schema, as the "ideal" or superstructural expression through externalized symbols of a groups' awakening self-consciousness. As noted earlier (see also Lukes, 1973: introduction), these crystallized sym­ • • • • • • • • • • • --87-­ boIs are collective and representations in two senses: first, they are collectively generated and carried; second, they are the externalized, shared vehicles by which the group first attains, and then reaffirms, their own distinct­ ive existence as a group. Now, while almost everyone recog­ nizes the importance of several of these notions in Durkheim's sociological system, few have clearly brought into focus the role of these critical inner connections linking social mor­ phological processes with the corresponding sociocultural pro­ cesses in Durkheim's fundamental explanatory model. Doubtless, much of the difficulty in perceiving the full outlines of Durkheim's causal model come from his char­ acteristic convergence of generic and genetic-evolutionary analyses. Now, Durkheim's own genetic and evolutionary claims for the significance of his pilgrimage to the "elementary forms" have often annoyed (eg. Evans-Pritchard, 1965, or W.H. Stanner, 1967, Lukes, 1973) or puzzled (eg. Bellah, 1973:xliii) many of his leading secondary interpreters. The British anthro­ pologi~s and American functionalists' search for the generic or universal structures of human society led them to persist­ ently slight Durkheim's genetic and evolutionary claims; in short, their generic emphasis swamped out Durkheim's genetic emphasis. Giddens especially has noted this persistent tenden­ cy of " ... secondary writers to conflate Durkheim's function­ al and historical analysis in a way which is in fact foreign to Durkheim's thought" (197la:106). Indeed, Giddens deserves credit for having repeatedly stressed that Durkheim's Elemen­ tary Forms, for example, has to be read genetically. Although Giddens appears willing to grant that this same work can also be read functionally, I cannot so easily agree. For! have discovered that, even as Durkheim'~ genetic-evolutionary ~ phasis has been persistently slighted, so too his generic focus on sociocultural process has been faultilY reported. Saving discussion of Durkheim's genetic-evolutionary frame­ work for subsequent chapters, let us now move to more closely define Durkheim's concern with generic sociocultural process . • • • • • • • • • • • --88-­ It must be acknowledged again and again that much of the confusion and neglect was unintentionally assisted by Durkheim's own characteristic conflation of generic and genetic-evolutionary approaches to sociocultural analysis. Now, Tiryakian (1962:19) reminds us that the French word elementaire as used by Durkheim "signifies not only 'elemen­ tary' as in a scale of complexity, but also 'fundamental' or 'basic.' " It is precisely in these terms that Durkheim's Bri­ tish anthropological critics have charged him with confusing "earliest" and'simplest" (eg. see Lukes, 1973:456). But the logic underlying Durkheim's conflation of his search for the universal or generic essence of human society and culture is still not widely perceived. For, in fusing his generic and genetic-evolutionary investigations into the nature and devel­ opment of human society and culture, Durkheim sought to find ~ paradigmatic situation, ~ prime case-study, for ~ "crucial experiment" in which there would be ~ one-to-~ correspon­ dence, ~ it ~' between symbolic forms and social forms, between the social morphological substratum and the social physiological or symbolic superstructure. Where collectively symbolic representations are deeply inter-fused with the fun­ damental structures of the group, Durkheim felt that he had discovered the "monocellular" (eg. see Bellah, 1959:456-7) form of sociocultural life, the template, as it were, from which all complex sociocultural forms evolved. Thus, the gen­ eric links between religion, society, and culture which Durk­ heim thought he had discovered in Australian aboriginal reli­ gion were primarily genetic and evolutionary connections. It is absolutely critical to realize that Durkheim's causal model--substructural social morphological processes and super­ structural collectively representational processes--led him to return, again and again, to the simplest case, the clear­ est connection between these two halves of human society. Indeed, it is not surprising that Durkheim justified his own characteristic conflation of generic and genetic analyses by likening them to Descartes' "first ring of certainty" • ~~~~._-~- • --89-­ (EF:16). For Durkheim's conflation derived, in large part, • from the influence of his cultural tradition--his was the • sociological equivalent of the Cartesian method of systema­ tic doubt, and return to indubitable first principles as the only sure road to objective certainty and inner certitude. "He (Durkheim) simply took it as axiomatic that there is an identity (structural and cultural) between simplicity and • evolutionary priority" (Lukes, 1973:456). Viewing his con­ flation of generic and genetic in this perspective, we should no longer wonder that only in terms of the most "elementary" • forms--in both senses--did Durkheim believe that he could surely discover generic sociocultural processes directly and unmistakably inter-fused with genetic-evolutionary ones. "Primitive classifications, then, offer privileged cases, be­ cause they are simpler ones" (EF:18). And again, "In the prim­ itive religions, the religious fact still visibly carries the mark of its origins" (EF: 20). Those who persist in reading • Durkheim's fundamental investigations as if they were solely or even primarily abstract, ahistorical, functional proposi­ tions must continue to neglect Durkheim's own logic and method, and his insistence that the intimate relations between society, • ---­ culture, and the person are evolutionarily constructed. As Gid­ dens has rightly noted: "There is no universal relationship be­ tween systems of ideas and their infrastructures~ the nature of this relationship is contingent upon the level of advance­ • ment of society" (1972a:27). • Let us briefly outline these two intimately related, but analytically separable, aspects of Durkheim's notion of the dual generic and genetic-evolutionary significance of the "elementary forms." In terms of Durkheim's elaboration of links between material and symbolic process, there is no way of fathoming Durkheim's virtual identification of the moral and the logical with the social without recognition of two • previous types of crucial ambiguities concerning the paradigm­ atic Durkheimian terms--namely, "conscience ll and "representa­ tion." As I have emphasized before, we continue to forfeit • • • • • • • • • • • --90-­ the key to unlocking the connections between Durkheim's socio­ logy of religion, his sociology of morality, and his sociology of knowledge. For in Durkheim's system, structures of conscious­ ness are intimately related to, and evolve out of, structures of conscience, while both, in turn, derive from the underlying social morphological process. Alpert reminded us over three and a half decades ago:"Les Formes Elementaires, it should not be forgotten, was originally entitled "The Elementary Forms of Thought and of Religious Life" (1939:55; see also W.H, Stanner, 1967:227). Similarly, as noted earlier, "collective representa­ tion ll contains both a verb-like and noun-like dimension. But as Bohannan points out: "American and English interpretations of Durkheim ... have separated the two substantive elements which Durkheim intended to leave conjoined. In the separation, the processual (or verb-like) concept has disappeared" (1960: 79-80). As Bohannan rightly notes, the fruitful ambiguities of Durkheim's key terms conscience and representation led him to a fundamentally different, and perhaps more profound, per­ ception of cultural and phenomenological process than the per­ spective today which splits apart the cultural object, the gen­ erating group, the constitutive symbolizing process, and the phenomenological experience. In terms of Durkheim's own biological metaphors, social morphology was to take as its prime task the study of the spa­ tial and material forms and physical-moral energies of socie­ ties, while social physiology was to focus primarily on the study of key collective representations as constitutive symbol­ ic processes. Clearly, just as in the organism morphological structures are closely intertwined with physiological-psycholo­ gical processes, so too Durkheim postulated similar intimacies between social morphological forms and processes and social physiological forms and processes. As noted earlier, Durkheim always sought to ground sociological analysis in an empirical­ ly verifiable material lI soc ial body." For example, against the Marxist Labriola in 1897, Durkheim refuted his later crit­ ics in these terms: "Either the conscience collective floats • • • • • • • • • • --91-­ in a void ... or else it is connected with the rest of the world by a substratum, upon which, consequently, it is depen­ dent" (in Giddens, 1972a:159). Bellah suggests: The analysis of society, personality, and symbolism and their interpretation in The Elementary Forms remains a fundamental reference point for present understanding. ••. In his theory of ritual Durkheim attempts to show how a new level of consciousness comes about and super­ sedes the isolated, fragmented, individual conscious­ nesses which operate in the dispersed conditions of ev­ eryday life. The new consciousness could be called a social consciousness or even a symbolic consciousness ••• for it cannot occur without symbolism •.. but it penetrates into the interior of the personality and e­ ven strongly affects physiology (1973:xlviii). Now, Durkheim's dynamic or processual focus moves to center stage in The Elementary Forms. In the "crucial exper­ iment" in which he purposely conflated generic and genetic­ evolutionary analyses, Durkheim'~ concern with both was pro­ cessual through and through. Durkheim took great care here to specify the links between social morphological and collec­ tively representational processes, with central focus on the social morphological "critical mass" needed for the emergence of religious phenomena. Further, these social intensities al­ so are the preconditions for the constitution of moral, reli­ gious, and logical categories and symbols. Let us briefly ex­ plore some of the following key sequential linkages by which collectively symbolic representations emerge out of social morphological intensities. (1) Social morphological implosions moralize organic egos in creating societies and persons. (2) The moralization of organic egos by cultural implo­ sions releases man from the confines of the organic cage. Social energies lift persons into the realm of freedom, of moral rules and intellectual concepts. Liberty is the product of reglementation. Man is the sociocultural animal. The evolution of man and the evolution of culture are contemporaneous. Symbolic culture is the prime genetic medium of human society and human personality. (3) Symbols act as visible, public collective represen­ tations of group self-consciousness. These collec­ tive representations both represent and constitute • • --92-­ • symbolic bonds of the group. Due to the moral inten­ sities which created them, certain collective symbols become "sacralized"--that is, invested with obliga­ tory respect and desirability. • (4) Inevitably, however, moral intensities fade in the face of the demands of everyday life. "Sacralized" collective symbols face similar moral depreciation. Therefore, periodic renewals help to remoralize or recreate the sacred intensity of collective symbols representing the group, and thus to reaffirm the so­ cial bond, and to revitalize the structures of con­ science and consciousness. • (5) The marked contrast between these two alternating phases of sociocultural life-dispersed and ordinary • versus gathered together in extraordinary excitement --gives rise to dichotomous oppositions between the "sacred" and the "profane." This fundamental set of symbolic oppositions creates tension in the socio­ cultural and phenomenological fields, and life be­ comes progressively energized by, and organized a­ round, these two poles. (6) In the very nature of the alternating rhythms of so­ ciocultural process, the "sacred" significance ori­ ginally attached to the moral implosion of the group • gradually becomes transferred to the image of the • group. Inevitably, the fluid and shifting collective representations become detached from their proces­ sual origins, and crystallized into permanent sym­ bolic forms. Symbolism always tends to grow more au­ tonomous. (7) The "contagiousness" of "sacral energies," plas the dependence of sociocultural process upon symbolism, means inevitably that the organizing tension between "sacred" and "profane" becomes extended to all spheres of reality and levels of experience. The • world is cosmicized through a compounding series of symbolic equations. The greater the degree of lami­ • nation, or multiple linkage of meanings on several levels, the greater the symbolic load, and thus, the greater the potency and significance. Phenomenologi­ cal analogy and metaphor serve as symbolic tools for the construction of classificatory systems in their their early stages. These constitutive symbolic e­ quations serve as crucial bridges transforming em­ pirical diversity into moral and conceptual unity. Elementary classificatory systems are simultaneous­ ly sociocentric and sacro-magical, for the prime • symbolic forms are linked to the structure of the group and its magical protocols. The legitimacy of structures of conscience and consciousness are bound both to the group and its religion. • • --93-­ Since symbols serve as time-binders holding groups together through time and space, as cOllectivities • • • • • • • • • • grow, so too must their representational symbols. Some viable, yet highly crystallized, symbols and transformational equations may become deeply sedi­ mented as axial or paradigmatic collective represen­ tations on the level of cultural traditions. As so­ cieties evolve, so too do their prime symbolic guid­ ance systems. Although first born in the clan and its totemic cult, if systems of morality and know­ ledge are to evolve, they must progressively shed their primal connection with the restrictive struc­ tures of both group and religion. Symbols blessed with a high degree of universalizability may help generate supra-societal or civilizational bonds. The extension of the social bond in terms of widening structures of fraternization, and universalization and rationalization of the legitimate structures of moral and intellectual authority proceed together on the world-historical level (we shall pursue these latter points especially in Chapte~Six and Seven). (8) Since the structure of human symbolic action is in­ herently dramatic (or rhetorical and dialectical), here we add the third and final, culminating phase to the first phase (tension-creating polarities)and the second phase (symbolic equations which extend the polarities)--namely, reunification through sym­ bolic transformations. Specifically, the two basic religious modes of asceticism (separation) and mys­ ticism (unification) sum up these phases of socio­ cultural process. Hence, tension is resolved, and the powers of the imagination and will released, through a crucial series of transformations of these mounting oppositions into a new and higher synthesis or unity. Now, if Durkheim's theory of generic sociocultural process is still to be considered a brilliant "just-so­ story," as even so insightful and sympathetic critic as Evans-Pritchard (1965) insists, then so be it! As Ken Kesey said in the introduction to his classic American novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo'~ Nest, "Its the truth even if it didn't happen" (1962:13). • --94-­ • 1. Social Morphological Implosions, the Emergence of Society, and Transformation of Egos into Moralized Persons Given Durkheim's initial image of the isolated unsocial­ ized organic ego, one way of viewing The Elementary Forms isas a detailed description, on the micro social interactional le­ • vel, of "that singularly creative and fertile psychic opera­ tion ... by which a plurality of individual consciousnesses enter into communion and are fused into a common consciousness" (DHN:335). Through this communion process, egos are transform­ • ed into persons. Through this fusion or consubstantiality, a new reality is born--society. • Now, no entity as self-centered and closed as the pre­ socialized individual willingly foregoes its own nature. Only an extraordinary force--a suprahuman (as it were) source of I~ energy--can transform isolated egos into moralized persons with meaningful goals. Durkheim discovered this source of "sa­ cred energy" in "collective effervescence." • 'f 11 . life k 1" h h~ co ect~ve~awa ens re ~g~ous t oug t upon • reaching a certain degree of intensity, it is because it brings about a state of effervescence which changes the conditions of psychic activity. Vital energies are over-excited, passions are more active, sensations stronger; there are even some which are produced only at this moment. A man does not recognize himself; he • feels himself transformed and consequently he trans­ forms the environment which surrounds him (EF:469). The social psychological process which Durkheim postulated here can be likened to centrifugal and divisive energies im­ • ploding into a fused, centripetal source of energy; Chardin (1961) described these as ritangential" and "radial" organi­ zing energies, respectively. In effect, the self-seeking ego is blasted out of its own self-centered private orbit into a new and more powerful "energy state"; or to shift the analogy slightly, there is a passage from the "out of step" diffused energy of normal white light to the fused and coherent energy • of a "laser beam." Now, these moral implosions generate extra-ordinary en­ ergies that transform the isolated and privatized ego into a • • • • • • • • • • • --95-­ socially constructed person. The center of his isolated ex­ istence then revolves not around priva~e passions but around public prescriptions. One can readily conceive how, when arrived at this state of exaltation, a man does not recognize him­ self any longer. Feeling himself dominated and car­ ried away by some sort of external power which makes him think and act differently than in normal times, he naturally has the impression of being himself no longer. It seems to him that he has become a new be­ ing: the decorations he puts on and the masks that cover his face figure materially in this interior transformation, and they aid in determining its na­ ture (EF:249-50). Such interior transformations mean that, in a very real sense, the pre-socialized ego becomes a new being; now moralized and socialized, it is now under the sphere of influence of the po­ werful energies of human society. Analogies with nuclear phys­ ics and other high energy phenomena in attempting to describe this crucial generic transformation of egos into persons are useful (though, of course, limited). For what Durkheim sought to describe here is essentially the evolutionary emergence of a totally new phenomena, breaking through the old restrictive organic envelope. The organic cage is left behind. It takes high-energy forms to overcome other strong energy patterns, and this is precisely what Durkheim postulated as going on in an "ideal typical" way in the "white heat" of Australian rituaL According to Durkheim, as traditional American social psychology also maintains (see, ego Nisbet, 1974), "society and person are twin-born." Society becomes the center of moral and conceptual life, having its phenomenological anchor in the newly moralized person's conscience and consciousness. For ever more, man shall be homo duplex, "two souls in one body twai.n." Ego and body, person and society, these Durkheimian symbolic equations are now the twin anchors of the irretrieva­ bly ambivalent human condition. When individual minds are not isolated but enter into close relation with and work upon each other, from their synthes~s arises a new kind of psychic life. It is clear­ ly distinguished by its peculiar intensity from that led by the solitary individual. Sentiments born and • • --96-­ • developed in the group have greater energy than pure­ ly individual sentiments. A man who experiences such sentiments feels himself dominated by outside forces that lead him and pervade his milieu. He feels him • self in a world quite distinct from that of his pri vate existence. This is a world not only more intense but also qualitatively different. Following the col­ lectivity, the individual forgets himself for the com­ mon end and his conduct is oriented in terms of a stan­ dard outside himself •.•. This activity is qualitatively different from the everyday life of the individual, as is the superior from the inferior, the ideal from the real (SP:91). Thus, in Durkheim's view, when a new level of intensity and • collective effervescence reaches a white heat, and consub­ stantiality is thereby consummated, social energies implode. Society and culture are born as entirely new levels of world­ activity. Through this evolutionary breakthrough, society and • culture are energized, thereafter to dominate biological and psychological levels. Through this communion process ,the dual­ ity of human nature is constructed, and the person--as oppo­ sed to the ego--emerges. Society and person are thus mutual • co-creations, and symbolic culture acts as the genetic medium. • If it is important to emphasize that society depends for its continued existence upon persons--"the clan, like every other sort of society, can live only in and through the individual consciousnesses that compose it" (EF:253)--the • converse is equally true. Collective ritual and myth--the genetic symbolic medium of co-creation--provide, as Durkheim poetically said, a "perpetual sustenance of our moral nature. " If moralized persons are not to lapse back into the scatter­ • ed egoisms or deepening autism of pre-social human nature, they can sustain themselves only by dipping again and again into the very fount of their existence--namely, collectively effervescent, symbolically energizing, human society. • The sentiments which society has for him raise the sentiments which he has for himself. Because he is in moral harmony with his comrades, he has more con­ fidence, courage, and boldness in action, just like the believer who thinks that he feels the regard of god turned graciously toward him. It thus produces, as it were, a perpetual sustenance of our moral nature (EF: 242) . • .... • --97-­ • • • • • • • • • Collective action, especially when extra-ordinary in nature, raises man above his egoistic half, and replenishes his moral nature. Collective ceremonial publicly revalidates his civic sense of self as a socially constructed and valuable person. Men do not deceive themselves when they feel at this time that there is something outside of them which is born again, that there are forces which are reanimated and a life which reawakens. This renewal is in no way imaginary, and the individuals themselves profit from it. For the spark of a social being which each bears within him necessarily participates in this collective renovation. The individual soul is regenerated too, by being dipped again in the source from which its life comes; consequently, it feels itself stronger, more fully master of itself, less dependent upon physical necessities (EF:391). Consciousness and society, conscience, culture, and per­ son, all imply one another in Durkheimian sociology. As Bohan­ nan points out, it was precisely one of Durkheim's main vir­ tues, in contrast to the heirs of both the idealists and the materialists, that he didn't bifurcate sociocultural process from phenomenological process. To Durkheim, cultural (that is, impersonal) process must become internalized in the person's conscience and consciousness if either are to live. There is no paradox here, really, for Durkheim himself observed: Just as there is no society without individuals, so those impersonal forces which are disengaged from the group cannot establish themselves without incarnating themselves in the individual consciousness where they individualize themselves (EF:302). Impersonal and personal, universal and particular, thing and process, culture and individual, these and other conventional dichotomies are seen simply as complementary phases of the same overall human process in Durkheim's sociological philoso­ phy. Surely this is necessary prerequisite for the foundations of the human sciences of the future. Now, according to Durkheim, the contrast between ego­ centric and undisciplined, random action, on the one hand, and highly focussed, socialized and moralized human action, on the other, creates a basic tension within the heart of man. It is as though we have conflicting voices competing for as­ cendancy within our inner lives. Freud, for example, at about • • • • • • • • • • • --98-­ the same time as Durkheim, mythologized this inner conflict in terms of id, ego, and superego. While human reality is thus basically conflictual to Durkheim, it is also fundamen­ tally creative. There was no oppressive feeling of primal guilt in Durkheim, however, as there was in Freud's work; no Durkheimian would call man "a disease of history" (N.O. Brown, 1959). Rather, if society makes men, so too do men make societies, and in the process each irretrievably alters the other. Society and person thus stand as mutual co-crea­ tions, and henceforth must perennially cope with their double burden. This was Durkheim's fundamental dialectic of human action. Forever more, man is double. His interior life has a "double-center of gravity"--for on the one hand, we see the self-centered and proportionless passions; on the other, we witness that cosmos of obligations, ideals,archetypal sym­ bols and dynamic energies called culture. By virtue of the latter's contrast with the former, they are set apart or "sa­ cralized. " When the Australian goes away from a religious cere­ mony, the representations which this communal life has aroused or rearoused within him are not oblit­ erated in a second. The figures of the great ances­ tors, the heroic exploits whose memmory those rites perpetuate, the great deeds of every sort, in which he too has participated through the cult, in a word, all these numerous ideals which he elaborated with the cooperation of his fellows, continue to live in his consciousness and, through the emotions which are attached to them and the ascendancy which they hold over his entire being, they are sharply distinguish­ ed from the vulgar impressions arising from his daily relations with external things. Moral ideals have the sawencharacter. It is society which forces them upon us,~~s the respect inspired by it is naturally extend­ ed to all that comes from it, its imperative rules of conduct are invested, by reason of their origin, with an authority and a dignity which is shared by none of our internal states; therefore, we assign them a place apart in our psychical life (EF:298). With the evolutionary emergence of human society, and therefore also cultural and phenomenological process, a pain­ ful but creative dualism is enshrined in the very heart of man. "Our nature is double: there really is a particle of di­ • • --99-­ vinity in us because there is within us a particle of these • great ideas which are the soul of the group" (EF:299). As al­ ways, Durkheim perceived the key nexus between our inner and outer lives to be structures of conscience. And granting that conscience and consciousness are always intimately intertwin­ • ed, nonetheless, in general, questions of conscience take pre­ cedence over questions of consciousness. • Although our moral conscience is a part of our conscious­ ness, we do not feel ourselves on an equality with it. In this voice which makes itself heard only to give us orders and establish prohibitions, we cannot recognize our own voices; the very tone in which it speaks to us • warns us that it expresses something within us that is not of ourselves. This is the objective foundation of the idea of the soul: those representations whose flow constitutes our interior life are of two different spe­ cies which are irreducible one into another. Some con­ cern themselves with the external and material world; • others with an ideal world to which we attribute a moral superiority over the first. So we are really made up of two beings facing in different and almost contrary di­ rections, one of whom exercises a real preeminence over the other. Such is the profound meaning of the antithes­ is which all men have more or less clearly conceived be­ tween the body and the soul, the material and the spiri­ tual beings who coexist within us (EF:29B). The progressive transformation of the organic ego into a per­ • sonality structured by conscience and consciousness generates the dualism of human nature. As with the old Christian image of man as homo duplex, the two parts of man are opposed to one another as body is to soul. • It is perfectly true that we are made up of two distinct parts, which are opposed to one another as the sacred to • the profane, and we may say that, in a certain sense, there is divinity in us. For society, this unique source of all that is sacred, does not limit itself to moving us from without and affecting us for the moment; it es­ tablishes itself within us in a durable manner. It arou­ ses within us a whole world of ideas and sentiments which express it but which, at the same time, form an integral and permanent part of ourselves (EF:297-B). In sum, the human condition is both unprecedently powerful • and irretrievably ambiguous. • -- ------- -------------------- • --100-­ • 2. The Break From the Organic Cage: Man'~ Ascent From the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom Evans-Pritchard observed of Durkheim's theses, borrow­ ing a phrase from Engels, that through the genetic medium of religious symbolism "f-1an ascends from the kingdom of necessi­i • ty to the kingdom of freedom" (1965:61). I believe that this telling phrase succinctly summarizes Durkheim's general frame­ work of thought. Since the textual evidence presented here comes largely from The Elementary Forms, it should be noted • that from his first great book on, Durkheim never tired of repeating that society is the source of moral rules and inte­ llectual concepts, that society constructs the person, that 1 culture releases man from the fixed bonds of the organic cage, • that human liberty comes through sociocultural reglementation, and so on and so forth. Let us, then, further explore Durk­ heim's early formulation of his philosophical anthropology. In The Division of Labor, for example, Durkheim correct­ ly argued that cultural evolution replaced biological heredi­ ty as the prime mode of human adaptation. "The more elevated the ~pecies, the more discretionary instinct becomes" (DL: 322) . • the hereditary contribution diminishes, not only in relative value, but in absolute value. Heredity be­ comes a lesser factor in human development, not only because there is an ever greater multitude of new ac­ quisitions it cannot transmit, but also because those it transmits disturbs individual variations less .••• • Indeed, it is very remarkable that instinctive life is • weakened as one mounts in the animal scale (DL:321). Thus, Durkheim posited a progressive release from the cramped confines of the organic cage--from the kingdom of necessity. With all his repeated arguments on "creative synthesis" (see • especially Rules, and "Individual and Collective Representa­ tions" in Sociology and Philosophy), Durkheim pushed back the liberating principle of the human condition to society and culture in themselves. To say that the influence of heredity is more general, more vague, less imperious is to say that it is small­ er. It no longer imprisons the activity of the animal in a rigid form, but leaves him with freer activity. • • • • • • • • • • • --101-­ When from animals one passes to man, this regression is still more marked .... Even where instinct survives, it has less force, and the will can more easily subdue it (DL:322). And again: ... heredity always leaves more room for new combina­ tions. Not only is there a growing number of things over which it has no power, but the properties whose continuity i~ assures become more plastic. The indivi­ dual is, thu~,~~rong1y chained to his past; it is easier for him to adapt himself to new circumstances which are produced, and the progress of the division of labor thus becomes easier and more rapid (DL:328). Agreeing with the old adage that "the progress of conscience is in inverse ratio to that of instinct" (DL:346), Durkheim further argued that the very notion of the person progress­ ively emerges through societal differentiation and the multi­ plication of individual possibilities . ... individual differences steadily multiply ... the constitutive elements of the average type are more di­ versified ..•. The average man assumes a physiognomy less and less precise and recognizable, and more and more sch­ ematic. He is an abstraction more and more difficult to fix and delimit. Further, the more elevated the species to which societies belong, the more rapidly they evolve, since tradition becomes more supple ••.. The average type changes, then, from one generation to the next (DL:327). The increasing suppleness of cultural traditions, as opposed to the rigidity of molecular inheritance, depends, in turn, on on societal differentiation. Thus, there emerges a more in­ tense and continuous collective symbolic life • .•• as the social horizon extends, as collective life, instead of being dispersed in a multitude of small cen­ ters where it can only be weak, is concentrated in a more limited number of places, it becomes at the same time more intense and more continuous (PE:297). The increasing intensity and continuity of long-term collect­ ive cultural activity forces man himself to change in turn . ... as societies become more vast and, particularly, more condensed, a psychic life of a new sort appears. Individual diversities, at first lost and confused a­ midst the mass of social likenesses, become disengaged, become conspicuous, and multiply. A multitude of things which used to remain outside consciences because they did not affect the collective being become objects of • • --102-­ • • • • • • • • • • representations. Whereas individuals used to act only by involving others •.. each 0 f them becomes a source of spontaneous activity. Particular personalities be­ come constituted, take consciousness of themselves . ... (the psychic life of society) becomes freer, more extensive, and, as it has, after all, no other bases than individual consciences, these extend, become com­ plex, and thus more flexible . ... Hence, the cause which called forth these differ­ ences separating man from the animals is also that which has forced him to elevate himself above himse]f (DL:347-8). Indeed, as Durkheim repeated again and again, this di­ versification itself forces man to grow increasingly autono­ mous and rational. Thus, both morality and knowledge move toward greater universall.ty and freedom. In Moral Education, for example, Durkheim contended that: ... the more societies become complex, the more dif­ ficult for morality to operate as a purely automatic mechanism. Circumstances are never quite the same, and as a result the rules of morality require intel­ ligence in their application. Society is continually evolving; morality itself must be sufficiently flex­ ible to change gradually as proves necessary (ME:52). The distinguishing characteristic of man from animals is " ... the greater development of his psychic life, (which) comes from his greater sociability" (DL:347). Inaeed, Durkheim transforms the old definitions of man as the reasoning ani­ mal, or homo religiosus, into homo sociale et syrnbolizans. l Given this evolutionary grounding of man's liberation from genetic chains to the past in emergent human interaction and cultural relationship, Durkheim enunciated the follow­ ing principle: "With societies, individuals are transformed in accordance with the changes produced in the number of so­ cial units and their relationships" (DL:345). For man's evo­ lutionary identity as the sociocultural animal means that man's dependence upon society is a liberating dependence. They (individuals) are made more and more free of the yoke of the organism. An animal is almost com­ pletely under the influence of his physical environ­ ment; its biological constitution predetermines its existence. Man, on the contrary, is dependent upon social causes (DL:345). --103-­ • • Man is the cultural animal. Man is the creature who dwells wi thin his own images. "Man is the animal," said C. • Geertz, 'who is suspended in webs of meaning that he himself has spun." Man is the "time-binder" as Korzybski suggested. Man 1s the only creature who makes himself through the med­ ium of his own symbolic forms. The evolution of man and the • evolution of culture are contemporaneous. Symbolic culture is the prime genetic medium of human societies and persons. Culture is an autonomous, emergent phenomenon, irreducible to biology and psychology; indeed, cultural processes feed­ • back down and alter biological structures (eg. the brain of homo sapiens) and individual psychological processes. Cul­ ture is the prime symbolic meaning and directive system of a group. This is part of Durkheim's profound, and basically optimistic, philosophical anthropology. • Further, if energy and information are considered basic ~ categories of life processes, then culture may be likened toI' "social DNA," for it lays the foundation of human informa­ • tional processes. Both socialization (social reproduction and the simultaneous construction of the person) and life­ cycle development are in-formed by the great collective sym­ bolic forms. "Mutations" or revolutions in the more adapta­ • ble (efficient and universalizable) symbolic forms stand on the mainline of sociocultural evolution. Human culture is negentropic, for instead of randomizing its potency, symbolic evolution shows a clear and definite tendency toward increas­ • ing complexity and adaptive power (eg. see Weber's concept of "rationalization"). I believe that Talcott Parsons deser­ ves credit for having been one of the first, as far as I know, to explore the analogy between religious culture in Durkheim's • Elementary Forms and genetic processes, information theory, and general systems theory (eg. see Parsons, 1973 ). I be­ lieve he might agree that culture acts as social DNA, for that is the secret to human evolution. With animals, the organism assimilates social facts to it, and, stripping them of their special nature, transforms them 1nto biological facts. Social life • • --104-- . • is materialized. In man, on the contrary, and part­ icularly in higher soci~ties, social causes substi­ tute themselves for organic causes. The organism is spiritualized (DL:346). This "hyper-spiritualization" is the very source of the reorganization of organic nature as social and cultural life • implode into ever-more powerful and universal structures of conscience and consciousness; this is the foundation of hu­ man freedom. As we discovered earlier, Durkheim argued that liberty comes through reglementation. • Liberty itself is the product of regulation. Far from • being antagonistic to social action, it results from social action. It is far from being an inherent pro­ perty of the state of nature. On the contrary, it is a conquest of society over nature ...• Liberty is the subordination of external forces to so­ cial forces, for it is only in this condition that the • latter can freely develop themselves. But this subord­ ination is rather the reverse of the natural order. It can, then, realize itself progressively only insofar as man raises himself above things and makes law for them, thus depriving them of their fortuitous, absurd, amoral character; that is, insofar as he becomes a so­ cial being. For he can escape nature only by creating another world where he dominates nature. That world is society (DL:386-7). It is only because we moderns habitually think of freedom in • negative terms, as the release of the individual from con­ straining traditional claims, that we have difficulty with Durkheim's notion that, at root, human freedom is positive-­ it emerges only through relationship. As Lynch (1966)v it is • observes, only mutuality that is ultimately liberating. • The individual submits to society and this submissive­ ness is the condition of his liberation. For man free­ dom consists in deliverance from blind, unthinking phy­ sical forces; this he achieves by opposing against them the great and intelligent force which is society, under whose protection he shelters. By putting himself under the wing of society, he makes himself, also to a certain extent, dependent upon it. But this is a liberating de­ pendence. There is no paradox here (SP:72). Truly, then, "Man ascends from the kingdom of necessity to the • kingdom of freedom" through collective symbolic forms. • • • • • • • • • • • --105-­ 3. Collective Representations as Symbols of Group Self-Consciousness "For a society to become conscious of itself and main­ tain the necessary degree of intensity the sentiments which it attains, it must assemble and concentrate itself" (EF:470). In The Elementary Forms, Durkheim proposed that human society is itself first created through the genetic medium of reli­ gious ritual. This symbolic genetic medium concentrates and intensely focusses social energies, as a solar mirror collects the rays of the sun, and thereby generates the first form of group self-consciousness. Durkheim's image of primitive reli­ gion, as Lukes aptly suggests, as a kind of "mythologized so­ ciology" was not a late development. For as early as 1897, in Suicide (see also Durkheim 1886, R.A. Jones, 1974b), Durkheim succinctly summarized this essential notion in this way: "Re­ ligion is--in a word--the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself; it is the characteristic way of thinking of collective existence" (S:3l2). Indeed, phys­ ical concentration becomes moralized through ritual sacrifice, for through such symbolisms men actually feel themselves be­ coming consubstantial. And the generative medium of this crea­ tive metamorphosis is collectively representational symbolism. As always, in his exploration of the nature and origins of the elementary forms of sociocultural life, Durkheim fuse1 his generic and genetic investigations. Therefore, he sought the generic nature of sociocultural process in terms of the genetic origins of human society. This necessarily involved central focus on what I shall call the "primitive sacral com­ plex" (see succeeding chapters) as the womb of society,cultuxe, and person. I believe, along with Giddens (eg. 1971a:106, 110, 114), that Durkheim's theses here ShOUllbae~genetically as well as generically. In critical terms, this means that Parsons' attempt to treat, for example, Durkheim's theory of the gen­ eric role of religion (translate to "ultimate value system based on non-empirical referents") in maintaining normative concensus, and thus, social order, in all societies is largely • • --106-­ misconceived. Rather, Durkheim here demonstrated genetically, in terms of the most elementary forms he could discover, the • self-creativeness of generic sociocultural process. Or, as Giddens puts it, "Religion is the expression of the self-crea­ tion, the autonomous development, of human society" (1971a :110) . And, of course, the emergence and crystallization of collective • symbolic representations as the cultural vehicle of group self-consciousness depends upon sustained social morphological intensities and imploding energies. Surely this recognition should greatly change the widely pervasive image of The Ele­ • mentary Forms supposed "idealization" of religion as the gen­ eric basis of The Central Value System, as well as the older misleading of Durkheim aS~Platonic social realist. Now, the very key to this collective process of group and • self-transformation (for the person is created along with the group) is the creative effect of cultural symbols. Indeed, as my formula that culture acts as "social DNA" suggests, Durk­ heim proposed that "Social life in all its aspects, and in • every period of its history, is made possible only through a vast symbolism" (EF:264). (Parsons, among others, mistook this as Durkheim's turn toward idealism). Now, the symbolic basis of the socioreligious bonds of the Australian aboriginees on • which Durkheim lavished his attention was, of course, the to­ temic emblem. Over and above the ties of "blood and soil," Durkheim insisted that the clan was first and foremost a com­ munity of common belief, of shared symbols, a community of • memories. For the members of a single clan are not united to each other either (solely) by a common habitat or by common blood, as they are not necessarily consanguin­ eous and are frequently scattered over different parts • of the tribal territory. Their unity comes solely from • their having the same name and the same emblem, their believing that they have the same relations with the same categories of things, their practising the same rites, or, in a word, from their participating in the same totemic cult (EF:194). In the final analysis, Durkheim made the symbolic community prior to the geographical or even the biological community. • • • • • • • • • • • --107-­ Indeed, kinship here is seen first and foremost as a socio­ religious bond. In essence, Durkheim proposed that public process is symbolic process. Symbolism serves as the visible vehicle of communication by which communion is consummated; it acts as the external cultural medium through which society attains consciousness of itself as a group . •.. if left to themselves, individual consciousnesses are closed to each other; they can communicate only by means of signs which express their internal states. If the communication established between them is to become a real communion, that is to say, a fusion of all particular sentiments into one common sentiment, the signs expressing them must themselves be fused into one single and unique resultant. It is the ap­ pearance of this that informs individuals that they are in harmony and makes them conscious of their mo­ ral unity (EF:262). External signs and symbols, as prime modes of social communi­ cation, thus serve as the womb of society. Man makes himself through the genetic medium of cultural symbols. Durkheim further proposed that material things as signs and gestures serve as externalized symbols which represent in­ ternalfeelings. Especially important here is the creative role of religious and ritual symbolism in the awakening of conscien­ ce and consciousness, the key phenomenological embodiments of sociocultural process. For what was closed and private becomes open, public and creative. Thus, paradoxically, in the begin­ ning, moral processes depend upon the utilization of material objects or physical gestures which, while devoid of "value" in themselves, yet become moralized or "sacralized" through group action . ••. collective representations originate only when they are embodied in material objects, things, or be­ ings of every sort--figures, movements, sounds, words, and so on--that symbolize them in some outward appear­ ance. For it is only by expressing their feelings by translating them into signs, by symbolizing them ex­ ternally, that the individual consciousnesses, which are by nature closed to each other, can feel that they are communicating and are in unison. The things that embody the collective represent~tions arouse the same feelings as do the mental states they represent, and, • • --108-­ • • • • • • • • • in a manner of speaking, materialize. They too are respected, feared, and sought after as helping po­ wers. Consequently, they are not placed on the same plane as the vulgar things that interest only our physical individualities but are set apart from them. Therefore, we assign them a completely different place in the complex of reality and separate them; and it is this radical separation that constitutes the es­ sence of their sacred character (DHN:335). Now, the specific empirical focus of these sacred sym­ bolisms is the totem. As noted earlier, Durkheim proposed that the community of ideals and memories symbolized by the totem underlay the communities of "blood and soil." The rite is thus the religious occasion when "Men who feel themselves united, partially by bonds of blood, but still more by a com­ munity of interest and tradition, assemble and become con­ scious of their moral unity" (EF:432). Here, Durkheim sug­ gested, men are led to symbolically project their sense of moral community onto some external object which they portray as the constitutive principle of their consubstantiality. This symbol embodying their essential mutuality is the totem. "They are led to represent this unity in the form of a very special kind of consubstantiality: they think of themselves as all participating in the nature of some determined animal" (EF:432; on consubstantiality, see also Kenneth Burke, 1969). The men who assemble on the occasions of these rites believe that they are really animals or plants of the species whose name they bear. They feel within them an animal or vegetable nature, and in their eyes, this is what constitutes whatever is most essential and the most excellent in them. So when they assem­ ble, their first movement ought to be to show each other this quality which they attribute to themsel­ ves and by which they are defined. The totem is their rallying sign, for this reason .•• they design it upon their bodies, but it is no less natural that they should seek to resemble it in their gestures, their cries, their attitude .... By this means, they mutual­ !x. show one another that they are all members of the same moral community and th~y become conscious of the kInship uniting them. The rl.te does not limit itselr to expressing this kinship; it makes it or remakes it. For it exists only insofar as it is believed in, and the effect of all these collective demonstations is to support the beliefs upon which they are founded * (EF: 400) . • • • • • • • • • • • --109-­ Thus, in short, Durkheim regarded the totem as the first prime constitutive symbol: lilt is the flag; it is the sign by which each clan distinguishes itself from the others, the visible mark of its personality, a mark borne by everything which is a part of the clan ... men, beasts, or things" (EF: 236) . I wish to emphasize now, as Robert N. Bellah (1973) has rightly pointed out, that these symbolic systems serve not merely a neutral representative function, but more im­ portantly, they are creative, or "constitutive" as Bellah suggests. They are "constitutive symbolism,1I the genetic cultural medium, vital to the very construction of the group in the first place. That an emblem is useful as a rallying center for any sort of group is superfluous to point out. By expressing the social unity in a material form, it makes this more obvious to all, and for that very reason the use of emblematic symbols must have spread quickly ..•• But more than that, this idea should spontaneously arise out of the conditions of common life; for the emblem is not merely a con­ venient process for clarifying the sentiment society has of itself: it also serves to create this senti­ ment; it is one of its constituent elements (EF:262). I believe that Durkheim here proposed a profound phenomeno­ logy of generic sociocultural process: cultural symbols are the genetic medium leading to the co-creation of the person and society. Such key symbols act not merely as neutral de­ vices of objective representation but also enter into the self-creation of the group itself. Acting as the collective­ ly representational symbols of group self-consciousness, gradually they become the very foundations of impersonal thought and group action. These dual functions of symbolism-­ representative and constitutive or creative--must be empha­ sized as twin keys as important to Durkheim's thought as the intimate relations between structures of conscience and con­ sciousness • Collective representations ••• presuppose that minds act and react upon one another; they are the product of these actions and reactions which are themselves possible only through material intermediaries. These • • • • • • • • • • • --iIO-­ latter do not confine themselves to revealing the mental state with which they are associated; they aid in creating it. Individual minds cannot corne in contact and communicate with each other except by corning out of themselves; but they cannot do this except by movements. So it is the homogeneity of these movements that gives the group consciousness of itself and consequently makes it exist. When this homogeneity is once established and these movements have once taken a stereotyped form, they serve to symbolize them only because they have aided in form­ ing them*(EF:263). 4. Alternating Phases of SocioCultural Life and Periodic Renewals Preface. By their very nature, however, such moral intensi­ ties are extra-ordinary. "Ecstasy" (in the root sense, see EF:259) cannot last forever. High energy particles fall into lower orbits; newly fused eg~ caught up in the momentary in­ tensities of moralized implosions, face the problem of the "morning after." Inevitably, the extraordinary concentration of human energies disperses and fades back into the inter­ stices of everyday life. In short, "ecstasy," while self­ fulfilling, is also self-exhausting. Further, the demands of everyday life--of eating, working, babies crying, fires burning, storms corning, enemies approaching, and so on-­ rudely intrude upon the sacred inviolability of the communal sacralizing moment. "Charisma," to use Weber's roughly para­ llel term, is like a high mountain peak surrounded by undu­ lating valleys. At some point, we must corne down from the heights and return to the mundane tasks of everyday life. The tension between everyday routine (Weber's alltag) and the charismatic moment is two-fold. First, these sacred symbols and energies flow back out to socialize. energize, and sacralize us and the world as we strive to "meet the de­ mands of the day." Correspondingly, even though we are newly energized, the farther we get from the the generating source of power, the more these symbolic energies are usurped and dissipated in everyday life. As Durkheim once poetically said, they are subject to the "slow usury of time." In sum, al­ • • --111-­ • • • • • • • • • though these tensions between alltag and "charisma" allow sacred energies to flow, it also means that the energy re­ serves, as it were, shall be constantly depleted. Even though we must forego the vulgar summary that the function of regular ritual and periodic celebration is to help men II recharge their batteries, II as it were, none­ theless, analogies with electricity and other types of ener­ gy flows are stimulating. Both Durkheim and Weber compared the IIsacredll and "charisma ll with electricity, in terms of its power to energize, and its tendency to flow or its con­ tagiousness. Thus, charismatic forces are like sacred elect­ ricity, for they energize as they flow. Now, because lI ec ­ stasyll is self-exhausting, and because the force of II c haris­ ma II is inevitably dissipated in the routine of everyday life, men must gather again and again to renew or recreate these sacred energies. liThe essential constitu9nt of the cult is the cycle of feasts which return regularly at determined e­ pochs ll (EF:39l). In turn, if society is to continue, that is, if the "collective conscience ll is to perdure, it must con­ stantly reassemble itself. II ..• Before all, rites are means by which the social group reaffirms itself periodically" (EF: 432). Thus, rite and ceremonial are the prime public means of society's self-creation and recreation. Through religjous ritual, society rekindles social energies and moral intensi­ ties, and thereby strengthens both persons and its own con­ sciousness of itself as a group. liThe rite serves ... to re­ vivify the most essential elements of the collective conscious­ ness. Through it the group periodically renews the sentiments which it has of itself, and of its unity" (EF:420). Just as moral intensities inevitably fade, so too the energy of the sacralized collectively representational sym­ bols face the same dissipation or moral depreciation. Be­ cause they no longer circulate at the same speed, they are no longer current, they lose their worth as IIcurrency." Charismatic moment and charismatic symbol equally tend to fade from consciousness and conscience. Society then tends to • • --112-­ • • • • • • • • • lapse back into that whirl of isolated and privatized ego­ isms from which it had only just escaped. Of course, social sentiments could never be totally absent. We remain in relations with others, the ha­ bits, ideas, and tendencies which education has im­ pressed upon us and which ordinarily preside over our relations with others, continue to make their action felt. But they are constantly combatted and held in check by the antagonistic tendencies arou­ sed and supported by the necessities of the daily struggle. They resist more or less successfully, ac­ cording to their intrinsic energy: but this energy is not renewed. They live upon: their past, and con­ sequently, they would be used up in the course of time, if nothing returned to them a little of the force -that they lose through these incessant con­ flicts and frictions (EF:390). In addition, the only way the twin attributes of human personhood--conscience and consciousness--can be in-formed and re-formed is through symbolic processes. "Since society cannot exist but in and through individual consciousnesses, this force must also penetrate us and organize itself within us; it becomes an integral part of our being anu by that very fact this is elevated and magnified" (EF: 39D. In turn, social institutions and cultural forms also fundamentally de­ pend upon viable energizing symbols. Thus, as the power of symbols fade, society, culture, and the person also begin to fade in the same degree. In short, beyond the desire for charismatic communitas (see Victor Turner, 1969), and periodic recharismatization of the profane, the continuing life of society and of symbolic culture require more or less regular moments of renewal and recreation. Steven Lukes provides the following lucid and concise summary of some of Durkheim's basic theses here: ... symbol ism was _ 'necessary if society is to become conscious of itself', and is 'no less indispensable for assuring the continuation of this consciousness.' Indeed, 'social life, in all its aspects and in every period of history, is made possible only by a vast symbolism.' The role of the emblem was to perpetuate and recreate the 'social sentiments' aroused by the rites; moreover, the rites themselves enabled social communication to 'become a real communion, that is to say, a fusion of all particular sentiments • ~ • • • • • • • • • • --113';"'­ into one common sentiment,' and they not only expres­ sed but served to 'support the beliefs upon which they are founded.' Hence, the cult in general was both a 'system of signs by which the faith is outwardly trans­ lated' and a 'collection of the means by which this is created and recreated periodically' (1973:472). Let us now explore the course of Durkheim's argument in this regard. Remember, first, that the life of the Aus­ tralian aborigenees, which Durkheim chose for his "crucial experiment," passed through alternating phases (as, apparent­ ly, all energy forms must). Using Durkheim's own dichotomies, one might term these the "economic" or "egoistic" phase (see, however, Book Three), on the one hand, and the "social" phase on the other. In the first, the population is scattered, hunt­ ing for food. In the second, the group gathers and moral in­ tensities rise, and sociocultural energies are generated and released (see also, for example, EF:246-7). The religious life of the Australian passes through successive phases of complete lull and of superexci­ tation, and social life oscillates in the same rhy­ thm. This puts clearly into evidence the bond uniting them to one another, but among the peoples called civ­ ilized, the relative continuity of the two blurs their relations. It might even be asked whether the violence of this contrast was not necessary to discharge the feelings of sacredness in its first form. By concen­ trating itself almost entirely in certain determined moments, the collective life has been able to attain its greatest intensity and efficacy, and consequently to give men a more active sentiment of the double ex­ istence they lead, and of the double nature in which they participate (EF:250-l). Now, as we have noted, "ecstasy" is self-consuming. In terms of the ultimate consummation or release of charismatic energies in the second or sacral phase, Durkheim noted: This effervescence often reaches such a point that it causes unheard of actions. The passions released are of such impetuosity that they can be restrained by nothing. They are so far removed from their extraor­ dinary conditions of life, and they are so thoroughly conscious of it, that they feel that they must set themselves outside of and above their ordinary morals ..•• They produce such a violent super-excitation of the whole physical and mental life that it cannot be be supported very long; the actor taking the princi­ pal part finally falls exhausted to the ground (EF: 24 7-8). • • • • • • • • • • • --114-­ Inevitably, the ebb and flow of everyday life returns. Durk­ heim observed that collective effervescence can never sus­ tain itself for long: " ... the exaltation cannot maintain itself at such a pitch; it is too exhausting. Once the cri­ tical moment has passed, the social life relaxes, intellect­ ual and emotional intercourse is subdued, and individuals fall back into their ordinary level" (SP:92). Since Durkheim's social psychology here inevitably suggests sexual analogies, especially when these charismatic moments or communitas are considered as orgiastic activities, it should be noted that the evident value of the analogy between moral and physical intercourse is, apart from the mutual excitation, the commun­ ion that is ultimately consummated. These analogies are not unusual, for one of the favorite images of mystics, for exam­ ple, over the centuries has been the intimate and all-encom­ passing union with their divine being or world-principle as bride or bridegroom. Inevitably, the demands of everyday life intrude upon communitas, upon the special world set apart. It is simply a rule of existence that men, having once attained the heights, must return to the lowlands, to the secure and supportive rou­ tine of everyday life. Indeed, there is a hidden dialectic in the alternating rhythms of "charismatic communitas" and the all tag or routine "profane" existence, for it is precise­ ly the continuing contrast between the two different forms of creativity unique to each that enables us to appreciate the distinctive virtues of the other. As always, diversity is generative; it is their very opposition which creates their processual unity. Durkheim observed that: Society is able to revivify the sentiments it has of itself only by assembling. But it cannot be assembled all the time. The exigencies of life do not allow it to remain in congregation indefinitely; so it scatters, to assemble anew when it feels again the need of this. It is to these necessary alternations that the regular alternations of sacred and profane times correspond (EF: 391) • Moral passions are thus dissipated in the routine of "meeting the demands of the day" (Weber, after Goethe). Al­ • • • • • • • • • • • --115-­ though energized by collective moralization, such sacred forces face inevitable depreciation. So too do the collect­ ive~y representational symbols, which serve as the genetic medium and prime cultural vehicle of these moralizing for­ ces. Society thus threatens to constantly lapse back into an amorphous collocation of warring egoisms. Without symbols, social sentiments could have only a precarious existence. Though very strong as long as men are together and influence each other reci­ procally, they exist only in the form of recollect­ ions after the assembly has ended, and when left to themselves, these become feebler and feebler; for since the group is now no longer present and active, individual temperaments easily regain the upper hand. The violent passions--which have been released in the heart of a crowd fall away, and are extinguished when this is dissolved, and men ask themselves with aston­ ishment how they could ever have been so carried away from their normal character (EF:263). Due to these alternating phases of communitas and all­ tag, or in Durkheim's terminology, the "sacred" and the "pro­ fane," sociocultural life rises and falls in an oscillating rhythm. And thus, the moralized personB commitment to his newly found obligations and goals also ebbs and flows with the rise and decline of sociocultural symbolism. The contin­ ued viability of significant prime symbols, as a genetic and cultural medium, is vital to the continued via~ility of both society and the moralized person. Sacred beings exist only when they are represented as such in the mind. When we cease to believe in them, it is as though they did not exist. Even those which have material form and are given by sensible exper­ ience, depend upon the thought of worshippers who a­ dore them; for the sacred character which makes them objects of the cult is not given by their natural constitution; it is added to them by belief •••. If these sacred beings when once conceived, are to haveno need of men to continue, it would be necessary that the representations expressing them always remain the same. But this stability is impossible. In fact, it is in the communal life that they are formed, and this communal life is essentially intermittent. So they necessarily partake of this same intermittency. They attain their greatest intensity at the moment when the men are assembled together and are in immed­ iate relations with one another, when they all partake • • • • • • • • • • • --116-­ of the same idea and the same sentiment. But when the assembly has broken up and each man has returned to his own peculiar life, they progressively lose their own original energy. Being covered over little by little by the rising flood of daily experiences, they would soon fall back into the unconscious, if we did not find some means of calling them back to consciousness and revivify them. If we think of them less forcefully, they amount to less for us and we count less upon them; they exist to a lesser degree (EF : 38 6 - 7) . As always, Durkheim considered evolutionary differences be­ tween these alternating rhythms according to social type. This rhythm is capable of varying in different societ­ ies. Where the period of dispersion is long, and the dispersion itself is extreme, the period of congrega­ tion, in its turn, is very prolonged, and produces veritable debauches of collective and religious life. Feasts succeed one another for weeks and even for mon­ ths, while the ritual life sometimes attains to a sort of frenzy. Elsewhere, these two phases of the social life succeed one another after shorter intervals, and then the contrast between them is less marked. The more societies develop, the less they seem to allow of too great intermittencies (EF:39l-2). Therefore, Durkheim proposed an evolutionary rule: in general, the intensity of collective rites varies inversely with their society's continuity and complexity. Further, the periodic renewal of self and society through ritual concelebration becomes reinforced, in a sort of psychosocioculturalfeedback process, as the prime creative cultural medium. Thus, religious culture, which by its nature seeks to establish definite and obligatory relationships be­ tween the macrocosm and the human microcosm, acts as a sort of "social DNA" in a number of ways. First, it both social­ izes and resocializes men (that is, acts as the medium of so­ cial reproduction), and second, it directs the growth of so­ ciety and the person as they develop. In social psychological terms, Durkheim suggests that the person realizes his contin­ ued dependence on collective symbolic process, and thus "he holds with all the strength of his soul to these practices in which he periodically recreates himself; he could not deny their principle without causing an upheaval of his own being, • • • • • • • • • • • --117-­ which he resists" (EF:403). Durkheim further observed that "the real reason for the cults" is to be found "in the in­ ternal and moral regeneration which they bring about" (EF: 388) • The only way of renewing the collective representa­ tions which relate to sacred beings is to retemper them in the very source of the religious life, that is to say, in the assembled groups •.•. The common faith becomes reanimated quite naturally in the heart of this reconstituted group, it is born again because it again finds those very conditions in which it was born in the first place. After it had been restored, it easily triumphs over all the private doubts which have have arisen in individual minds. The image of the sacred things regains power enough to resist the in­ ternal or external causes which tend to weaken it. In spite of their apparent failure, men can no longer believe that their gods will die, because they feel them living in their own hearts •... Men are more con­ fident because they feel themselves stronger; and they really are stronger, because forces which were lang­ uishing are now reawakened in their consciousness (EF: 387) . However, the mere fact of physical congregation alone is not, of course, sufficient to generate adequate moral in­ tensities and thus social communion. Rather, symbolic proces­ ses enter, as necessary elements, into the very creation of society and self. The specific form of the first constitutive cultural symbols was ritual sacrifice, joined with mythic commemorations. Through sacred commensality all are made "as one," again and again . .•• the object of this communion is manifest. Every member of a totemic clan constitutes a mystic sub­ stance within which is the pre-eminent part of his being, for his soul is made out of it. From it came whatever powers he has and his social position, for it is this which makes him a person. So he has a vi­ tal interest in maintaining it intact and in keeping it, as far as possible, in a state of perpetual youth. Unfortunately, all forces, even the most spiritual, are used up in the course of time if nothing comes to re­ turn to them the energy they lose through the normal workings of things; there is a necessity of the first importance here which .•. is the real reason for the positive cult. Therefore, the men of a totem cannot retain their position unless they periodically reviv­ ify the totemic principle which is in them; and as • • • • • • • • • • • --118-­ they represent this principle in the form of a vege­ table or an animal, it is to the corresponding ani­ mal Or vegetable species that they go to demand the supplementary forces needed to renew this and reju­ venate it. A man of the Kangaroo clan believes him­ self and feels himself a kangaroo; it is by this qual­ ity that he defines himself; it is this which marks his place in the society. In order to keep it, he takes a little of the flesh of this same animal into his own body from time to time. A small bit is enough, owing to the rule: the part is equal to the whole (EF: - -- - - -- 378-9). Even more, Durkheim observed that there are special moments and special things which are favored as commensal sacrifices due to their special potencies, and thus, their special symbolic significance. Contrary to his repeated as­ sertions strewn throughout The Elementary Forms, Durkheim here acknowledged that the choice and content of religious symbols is not wholly arbitrary (see also Mary Douglas, Nat­ ural Symbols, 1973). Especially important here were the first fruits of the harvest. If this operation is to produce all the desired ef­ fects, it may not take place at no matter what mo­ ment. The most appropriate time is when the new gen­ eration has just reached its complete development, for this is also the moment when the forces anima­ ting the totemic species attain their maximum inten­ sity. They have just been drawn with great difficul­ ty from those rich reservoirs of life, the sacred trees and rocks. Moreover, all sorts of means have been employed to increase their intensity still more •... Also, by their very aspect, the first fruits of the harvest manifest the energy which they contain: here the totemic gods acclaims himself in all the glory of his youth. This is why the first fruits have always been regarded as a very sacred fruit, reser­ ved for very holy beings. So it is natural that the Australian uses it to regenerate himself spiritually. Thus, both the date and the circumstances of the cere­ monies are explained (EF:379). Often, the manifest purpose of totemic ritual commun­ ion is to insure the reproduction of the totemic species. "When the close union of the animal has once been admitted, men feel acutely the necessity of assuring the regular repro­ duction of the principal object of the cult" (EF:432-J) .Indeed, as Durkheim noted, "it is owing to this state of dependency • • • • • • • • • • • --119-­ upon the thought of men, in which the gods find themselves, that the former are able to believe in the efficacy of their assistance" (EF:387). Of course, men would be unable to live without gods, but on the other hand, the gods would die if their cult were not rendered. This does not have the sole object of making the profane beings communicate with sacred beings, but it also keeps these latter alive and is perpetually remaking and regenerating them (EF:388). In addition, the totemic commensal sacrifice often takes on the added meaning of a mythic commemoration. The heroic mem­ ories of the ancestors, who first received the totem from the spirits or from the world-directive principle, are thus sim­ ultaneously called to life. Belief and act, conscience and consciousness, are forever joined in fundamental sociocult­ ural process. Imagination and symbol serve as the key media­ ting terms. The function cr rather the effect of commemorative rites, Durkheim observed, consists " ..• in recollecting the past and, in a way, making it present by means of a veritable dramatic representation" (EF:4l6). "We have here a whole group of ceremonies whose sole purpose is to awaken certain ideas and sentiments, to attach the present to the past or the individual to the collectivity" (EF:423). Everything is in representations whose only object can be to render the mythical part of the clan present to the mind. But the mythology of.a group is the system of beliefs common to this group. The traditions whose memory it perpetuates express the way in which the so­ ciety represents man and the world: it is a moral sys­ tem and a cosmology as well as a history. So the rite serves and can serve only to sustain the vitality of these beliefs, to keep them from being effaced from memory, and in sum, to revivify the most essential ele­ ments of the collective consciousness. Through it the group periodically renews the sentiment which it has of itself and of its unity: at the same time, indivi­ duals are strengthened in their social natures. The glorious souvenirs which are made to live again before their eyes, and with which they feel they have a kin­ ship, give them a feeling of strength and confidence: a man is surer of his faith when he sees to how distant a past it goes back and what great things it has in­ spired (EF:419-20). • ~. • • • • • • • • --120-­ In the last, Durkheimian, analysis, society perdures only, as Weber also once observed, as a "community of memo­ ries." It is these shared memories of the heroic ancestors, coupled with the memory of the "charismatic communitas" that lingers on. These not only constitute phenomenological foun­ dations of society, but also continue to energize and direct people by their august greatness or awful sanctity. Thus', Durkheim postulated another key dialectic to human symbolic action--the ideal becomes a reality, yet inevitably they di­ verge, only to fuse again, and in the process, each pole ir­ retrievably alters the other. All that was said, done, and thought during this period of fecund upheaval survives only as memory, a memory no doubt as glorious as the reality it recalls, but which is no longer at one. It exists as an idea or ra­ ther as a composition of ideas. Between what is felt and perceived and what is thought of in the form of ideals there is now a clear distinction. Nevertheless, these ideals could not survive if they were not period­ ically renewed. This revivification is the function of religious or secular feasts and ceremonies, all public addresses in churches and schools, plays and exhibi­ tions, in a word, whatever draws men together into an intellectual and moral communion. These movements are, as it were, minor variations of the great creative move­ ments. But these means have only a temporary effect. For a short time the ideal comes to life and approaches real­ ity, but it soon becomes differentiated from it (SP:92). Indeed, Durkheim universalized the necessity of regular renew­ als of the charismatic energy of all groups: .•• This is why all parties, political, economic, or confessional, are careful to have periodical reunions where their members may revivify their common faith by manifesting it in common. To strengthen those senti­ ments which, if left to themselves, would soon weaken, it is sufficient to bring those who hold them together and to put them into closer and more active relations with one another (EF:240-1). 1 By virtue of the regular periodicity of ritual commen­ sality, and the commemorative dramatic representations or mi­ metic re-enactments of the ancestors heroic deeds, and the ensuing "community of memories," the sacred symbols become historicized. Sacral symbols thereby become attached to dura­ ble social sentiments and memories. Thus, the dialectic of • • --121-­ symbol and sociocultural process deepens, for these .. • systems of totemic emblems, which are necessary if society • is to become conscious of itself, are no less indispensable for assuring the continuation of this consciousness" (EF:263). If society and person are to endure, they must become rooted in symbolic forms. If symbols are to survive, sentiments must become durable; in short, they must become historicized. If sentiments are to attain historical durability, they must be symbolically sedimented deep within the sociocultural pro­ • cess. In other words, they must become prime constitutive sym­ bols. • if the movements by which these sentiments are ex­ pressed are connected with something that endures, the sentiments themselves must become more durable. These other things are constantly bringing them to mind and arousing them; it is as though the causes which exci­ • ted them in the first place continued to act. Thus these systems of emblems, which are necessary if so­ ciety is to become conscious of itself, are no less indispensable for assuring the continuation of this consciousness (EF:263). • Besides the more or less regular periodic commemorations or concelebrations of ritual commensality, Durkheim observed that there are other periods of history which are, as it were, permeated by charisma. During these extraordinary times, the • ideal is formed and lived, and becomes thereby a model for generations to come. These are the crucial turning points of societies, the charismatic times when a people is really born, or made anew, or reformed, or when they embark upon entirely new directions and aspirations. Such extraordinary periods, since they strike so deeply into the axial structures of con­ science and consciousness, come to constitute the cultural • historical capital off of which societies and persons live for generations after. Here, Durkheim observed: • Besides these passing and intermittent states, there are other more durable ones, where this strengthening influence of society makes itself felt with greater consequence and frequently even with greater bril­ liance. There are periods in history when under the influence of some great collective shock, social in­ teractions have become much more frequent and active. That general effervescence results which is character­ • • • • • • • • • • • --122-­ istic of revolutionary or creative epochs. Now this greater activity results in a general stimulation of individual forces. Men see more and differen~~y now than in normal times. Changes are not merely~ahades and degrees: men become different. The passion moving them are of such intensity that they cannot be satis­ fied except by violent or unrestrained actions, act­ ions of superhuman heroism or of bloody barbarism. This is what explains the Crusades, for example, or many of the scenes, either sublime or savage, of the French Revolution (EF:24l). As Robert N. Bellah (1973:xlix) notes, Durkheim thus distinguished between two basic phases of sociocultural pro­ cess: the creative and the re-creative or commemorative. Ri­ tual repeats archetypal symbolic events, while those "great historic outbursts of collective effervescence" create new prime guidance symbols. Thus, charismatic movements come to represent foundation periods in the life of all societies. ... at such moments of collective ferment are born the great ideals upon which civilizations rest. The periods of creation or renewal occur when men for var­ ious reasons are led into a closer relationship with each other, when reunions and assemblies are most fre­ quent, relationships better maintained, and the ex­ change of ideas most active. Such was the great crisis of Christendom, the movement of collective enthusiasms which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, bring­ ing together in Paris the scholars of Europe, gave birth to Scholasticism. Such were the Reformation and Renaissance, the revolutionary epochs and the Social­ ist upheavals of the nineteenth century. At such mo­ ments, this higher form of life is lived with such in­ tensity and exclusiveness that it monopolizes all minds to the more or less complete exclusion of egoism and the commonplace. At such times the ideal tends to be­ come one with the real, and for this reason men have the impression that the time is close when the ideal will in fact be realized and the Kingdom of God estab­ lished on earth (SP:9l-2). Finally, we should reflect briefly on the "eternal" significance of these generic dialectical processes which Durkheim here postulated, such as those between symbol and sentiment, self and society, charismatic and ordinary moment, communitas and history, and so on and so forth. Many inter­ preters of Durkheim's Elementary Forms have taken his famous concluding remark that "there is something eternal in reli­ • • • • • • • • • • --123-­ gion" (EF:474) in a rather narrow functional sense. Believ­ ers, for instance, have seized upon this passage as evidence that religion, in the traditional metaphysical sense, should be considered an eternal generic phenomenon (eg. see G. Baum, 1973:14). Others have concluded that Durkheim spoke in formal generic terms of the universal functional contributions of religion to social solidarity, psychological strength, and so on. Ye~ neither position adequately grasps Durkheim's full meaning or larger intention, for neither takes into account the genetic and evolutionary and metaphorical meanings of Durkheim's famous statement. Setting aside until a succeed­ ing chapter discussion of the "primitive sacral-magical com­ plex," we should not forget that Durkheim here interpreted religion in a metaphorical sense as the prime symbolic form by which a group attained consciousness of itself as a group. Further, in Durkheim's doctrine, ritual process was seen main­ ly as signifying the self-creativeness of sociocultural pro­ cess; Durkheim secularized its meanings. Giddens (1971a, 1972a) is one of the few analysts who has begun to stress this aspect of Durkheim's sociology of religion. Indeed, if one puts this famous quotation back in he context of his total statement, one can clearly discern Durkheim's real underlying intention . There is something eternal in religion which is des­ tined to survive all the particular symbols in which religious thought has successively enveloped itself. There can be no society which does not feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and the collective ideas which makes its unity and its personality. Now this moral remaking cannot be achieved except by the means of reunions, assemblies, and meetings where the indivi­ duals, being closely united to each other, reaffirm in cornmon their cornmon sentiments; hence corne the cere­ monies which do not differ from regular religious cere­ monies, either in their object, the results which they produce, or the processes employed to attain these re­ sults. What essential difference is there between an assembly at Christmas celebrating the principal dates of the life of Christ, or of Jews remembering the Exo­ dus from Egypt, or the promulgation of a new moral or legal system or some great event in the national life (EF : 4 74 - 5) ? • ---- • --124 .... ­ 5. The Sacred and the Profane: Fundamental Tensions in Sociocultural Life • Preface. The marked contrast between these two alternating phases of sociocultural life gives rise, in Durkheim's model, to dichotomous notions contrasting the sacred with the pro­ fane. This conflict between dispersed and autistic egos and • communalized and moralized persons is creative in that the tension works to energize and organize all of human life. Tension between the sacred and the profane is the driving force in the symbolic field of society, and within the per­ • son. As is true of all levels of reality, without this ten­ sion between incompatible elements or positions, no energy would flow. Difference energizes~ diversity is generative. Energy flows created by this tension between the sacred and • the profane serves, in short, to organize and energize and guide the decision matrices of societies and persons. Now, if human experience were merely neutral or homo­ geneous, we would find ourselves devoid of reason for choice, • and, therefore, action. If human reality lacked elementary invidious distinctions--such as those between good and evil, order and chaos, the pure and the impure, the higher and the lower, the positive and the negative, the beautiful and the • monstrous, the creative and the destructive, the way forward and the way back, and so on--we would lack the basic organi­ zing tension that energizes and directs human action. Every society and person makes some series of distinctions between • fundamental polarities, for without these compounding opposi­ tions, we stand paralyzed. Given a primal undifferentiated unity, in Durkheim's case the communion of aboriginal collec­ tively effervescent ritual, our next need is to begin to dif­ • ferentiate within this unity certain separable parts. Such • fundamental cleavages between "higher" and "lower" ~g. Genesis, see also K. Burke, 1970) serve as the vehicle for differen­ tiating reality and allowing us to deal with its specific forms. Primal unity, and then progressive differentiation, coupled with periodic re-unification~ these are the funda­ • I. --125-­ mental phases in Durkheim's dialetic of generic sociocult­ ural process. • Now, always and everywhere, positive and negative as­ pects of these basic polarities are expressed in terms of conscience and consciousness. Questions of moral right and wrong are always intimately intertwined with questions of • consciousness, of truth and error, of following reality ra­ ther than unreality. In positive terms, all societies and persons lay themselves under positive obligations to affirm as true, good, significant, and morally right and desirable • those series of phenomena judged as "sacred" to the group. Sacred means values constitutive to the group. These posi­ tive injunctions generate goals and values which are carried through the imagination, and internalized in the personality • structure, and established in the institutions of the group. Conversely, all societies and persons find themselves nega­ tively obligated to avoid falsity, evil, destructiveness, and regions of unreality. Those who follow the positive norm­ • ative prescriptions gain in self-esteem, and their sense of self-worth and contributions to moral order are often public­ ly validated. Those who violate, or congenitally follow nega­ tive proscriptions, lose in status and self-esteem. They may • be branded or "labelled" as failures, and at the most, as dangerously destructive deviants. As Robert K. Merton once observed, every society has its own peculiar set of "moral alchemies," especially for the assignment of guilt and nega­ • tive status. Anxiety, fear, shame, degradation, and ultimate defilement are the deviants' assigned or self-chosen fate (see, for example, P. Ricoeur, 1969). Thus, by its very na­ ture, deviance is linked with the profane, and the profane • is also dependent, in turn, upon the prior definition of the sacred. As Mary Douglas (1966) -notes, "purity and danger" are relational. Just as human nature is irretrievably rent by conflict • beteeen the dictates of ego and person, body and soul, so too society and culture are inevitably polarized in terms of the • • --126-­ active opposition between the sacred and the profane, between • the pure and the impure. Indeed, one of the virtues of Durk­ heim's perspective here is that he clearly perceived the in­ timate links between the resonating tensions between all that is sacred, true, good, orderly, pure, powerful, and all • that is profane, false, evil, chaotic, dangerous, in symbol­ ic terms on both the phenomenological and sociocultural lev­ els. In short, public and private phenomenologies are to be seen as inextricably intertwined phases of the same generic • human process. a. The Transformation of the Ego, Alternating Phases of So­ cial Life, and the Emergence of the Sacred and the Profane • Through collective effervescence, Durkheim postulated, • and the resulting fusion into a common consciousness, egos are transformed into persons. Through this consubstantialit~ a new reality is born--society. In the very nature of this transformation " •.• the contents of their consciousness is changed" (EF:389). The very core of this change from ego to person is the emerging contrast between the sacred and the profane. • In his own set of positivist symbolic equations, Durk­ heim associated the ego, commonness, and utilitarian life activities with the profane, while the person, the extra-or­ dinary, and things worthy of obligatory respect were linked • with the sacred. Hence, from the first, it is the alterna­ tion of phases of sociocultural life which gives rise to these very different psychological and cultural modes of life. Durkheim observed, for instance, that when an indivi­ dual participates in the collective effervescence: • • .•. it is just as though he really were transported into a special world, entirely different from the one where he ordinarily lives, and into an environment filled with exceptionally intense forces that take hold of him and metamorphose him. How could such experiences as these, fail to leave in him the conviction that there really exist two heterogeneous and mutually incomparable worlds? One is that where daily life drags wear­ • • • • • • • • • • • --127-­ ily along; but he cannot penetrate into the other without at once entering into relations with extra­ ordinary powers that excite him to the point of fren­ zy. The first is the profane world, the second that of sacred things (EF:250). Thus, Durkheim postulated the existence of two very different worlds of human experience: ordinary days spent by dispersed egos in utilitarian tasks, versus extraordinary feast days spent by moralized persons in concentrated collective cere­ monial. On ordinary days, it is utilitarian and individual a­ vocations which take the greater part of the attention. Everyone attends to his own personal business; for most men, this primarily consists in satisfying the exigencies of material life, and the principal incen­ tive to economic activity has always been private in­ terest. On feast days, on the contrary, these preoc­ cupations are necessarily eclipsed; being essentially profane, they are excluded from these sacred periods. At this time, their thoughts are centered upon their common beliefs, their common traditions, the memory of their great ancestors, the collective ideal of which they are the incarnation; in a word, upon social things (EF: 399-90) . Now, due to his own polemical situation and cultural commit­ ments, Durkheim symbolically equated the sacred with the so­ cial and the moralized person, and the profane with disper­ sed egos engaged in common and utilitarian activity. I be­ lieve, however, that the validity of Durkheim's insight into the universality of sacred and profane cultural symboliza­ tions can be considered quite apart from the peculiar con­ tents of referents which he utilized. I believe that Durk­ heim appeared to have made a basic mistake by seemingly ban­ ishing common and9ractical activity, especially in the eco­ nomic sphere, from the all-important realm of the social and the moral (see also Book Three). Unfortunately, his polem­ ics led him here to extreme statements contrary to other parts of his own doctrine, such as the following sociologically in­ advisable thesis: "The principal incentive to economic act­ ivity has always been private interest." This is only true if economic action is to be regarded solely from the biologi­ calor utilitarian point of view. However, I believe that one • • • • • • • • • • • --128-­ could mount a properly sociological view of economic action, drawing in part from Durkheim himself (see also Book Three): Even the material interests which these great reli­ gious ceremonies are designed to satisfy the public order and are therefore social. Society as a whole is interested that the harvest be abundant, that the rain fall at the right time and not excessively, that the animals reproduce regularly. So it is society that is in the forefront of every consciousness; it dominates and directs all conduct; that is equivalent to saying that it is more living and active, and con­ sequently, more real, than in profane times (EF:390). b. The Positive Pole of Sociocultural Life: Attributes of the Sacred According to Durkheim, key distinguishing characteris­ tics of "sacredness" include: hierarchical value, the moral authority and obligatory respect due to high position, its opposition to, or ability to repel, the profane, and its "con­ tagiousness." Such attributes are, of course, linked together. It is important to remember at the outset, however, that the sacred and the profane are relationally defined--that is, their dichotomous existence is inter-dependent. Their contrast is necessary to their very mutual existence; much like the contrast between figure and field is necessary to perception. Second, following the same metaphor, just as localized figures depend for their separate perceptual existence upon contrast with the prior existence of a more generalized background field, so too does the profane depend upon the prior exist­ ence of the more fundamental category of the sacred. Or, in other words, as Poggi (1972) observes, even the profane itself is a religious creation! For the sacred defines not only it­ self, but its opposite as well. Thus, the anchor of the sym­ bolic system of society and the person is the sacred; it is the ground of human existence. While the negative pole of the profane is a necessary element, only the sacred is sufficient. Let us now explore some of these more or less paradoxical con­ tentions of Durkheim in his magisterial Elementary Forms. First, it is well to remember that Durkheim directed • • • • • • • • • • • --129-­ our attention toward religion as the primal evolutionary matrix of society, culture, and the person; I call this his seminal thesis of the "primitive sacral complex" (see a suc­ ceeding chapter in this Book). This meant that in generic terms Durkheim defined religion's role in social, cultural, and phenonenological process in relational terms. That is, religion referred to the energizing and guiding oppositions between sacred and profane, on the one hand, and the micro and macrocosm on the other. In etymological terms, this mean­ ing of religion was as re-ligare that which binds or ties everything together, and orients experience, and guides us toward a common goal. This is one reason why Durkheim constantly repeated his contention that sacredness is superimposed upon objects, pla­ ces, and things by society--"anything can be sacred." Now, while I have criticized this position that symbols are utter­ ly arbitrary and conventional, I believe that Durkheim's cen­ tral thrust here was correct in emphasizing that symbolic sets and series of equations are socioculturally generated. They are not natural "givens." Indeed, using Levi-Strauss's funda­ mental binary opposition between nature and culture, these symbolic sets of equations are the interface between "condi­ tions" and "intentions." Symbols are our own creations, the means by which we make and remake ourselves. Therefore, the first key to understanding Durkheim's notion of the universal significance of the opposition between the sacred and the pro­ fane is to be sought in terms of the symbolic sets of equa­ tions by which society, culture, and person are progressively constructed. Early in The Elementary Forms, for instance, Durkheim defined religion, as the symbolic interface between nature and culture, society and person, in terms of the compounding series of oppositions between the collectively defined sacred­ ness and profaneness. All known religious beliefs, whether simple or complex, present one common characteristic: they presuppose a classification of all things, real and ideal .•. into • • • • • • • • • • • --130'-­ two classes or opposed groups, generally designated by ... the words profane and sacred. This division of the world into two domains, the one containing all that is sacred, the other all that is profane, is the distinctive trait of religious thought. The beliefs, myths, dogmas, and legends are either representations or systems of representations which express the nature of sacred things, the virtues and powers which are at­ tributed to them, or their relations with each other and with profane things. But by sacred things one must not understand simply those personal beings which are called gods or spirits: a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred (EF:52). In his drive to emphasize the social creation of sacredness, Durkheim argued that this positive pole of sociocultural life is not based upon the inherent qualities of objects. The sacred character assumed by an object is not implied in the intrinsic properties of this latter: it is added to them. The world of religious things. is no~one part­ D:urar-aspect of empirical nature; it is superimposed upon it (EF:26l). - Durkheim resisted, therefore, all efforts to narrowly circum­ scribe the parameters of religious symbolism; indeed, he had to do so if he was to successfully maintain his tacit conten­ tion that religious action is the constitutive foundation of human life. Thus, definitions of religion cannot be limited solely to consideration of spirits, gods, rites, etc.; rather, any definition must refer to the massive and sustained social, cultural, and phenomenological impacts of religious action. The circle of sacred objects cannot be determined, then, once and fcrall. Its extent varies infinitely, according to the different religions. That is how Bud­ dhism is a religion: in default of gods, it admits the existence of sacred things, namely, the four noble truths and the practices derived from them. {Footnote: not to mention the sage and the saint who practice these truths and who for that reason are sacred (EF: 52) . Now, the particular ceremonial occasions whereby the op­ positions between the sacred and the profane are symbolically orchestrated, and human energies mobilized, are called rites. Religious rites serve to concentrate collective attentions and intentions; as a solar mirror collects the rays of the • • • • • • • • • • • --131-­ sun, ceremonial and ritual act as the focal point by which the refractory rays of life are gathered up together and fused into the most potent instrument of society. The rite, the magic circle, is thus the point of origin, and contin­ uing creative center of sociocultural life (see, for example, Josef Pieper, 1953). A rite can have this character; in fact, the rite does not exist which does not have it to a certain degree. There are words, expressions, and formula which can be pronounced only by the mouths of con­ secrated persons; th8€e are gestures and movements which everybody can~perform. If the Vedic sacrifice has had such an efficacy that, according to mythol­ ogy, it was the creator of the gods ... it is because it possessed a virtue comparable to that of the most sacred beings (EF:52). Now, the creative character of these socioculturally genera­ ted symbols is clearly manifest in the sacred objects of the Australian aboriginees. The churinga, Durkheim observed, not only" ... keeps the profane at a distance," but it also has: ... all sorts of marvellous properties: by contact it heals wounds ... it has the same power over sick­ ness; it is useful for making the beard grow; it con­ fers important powers over the totemic species, whose normal reproduction it ensures; it gives new force, courage, and perserverance, while, on the other hand, it depresses and weakens their enemies. This latter belief is so firmly rooted that when two combatants stand pitted against one another, if one sees that the other has brought the churinga against him, he loses confidence and his defeat is certain (EF:142-3). Clearly, this passage reveals the centrality of symbols of prime potency within aboriginal culture. Following Durkheim, Pieper, and Evans-Pritchard, we may now discover why through religious ritual man "ascends to the kingdom of freedom." First, because religion in the sense of re-ligare places man in direct and mutually obligatory relationships with the generative and directive sources of the macrocosm. Second, because freedom is thus defined relationally--it is not mere­ ly a negative category, a state from which we escape from constraint, from negative being. Rather, human freedom is seen here as a voluntary and consistent relationship with the generative and directive sources of the cosmos. • • • • • • • • • • • --132 .... ­ Next, Durkheim asked: how is the sacred to be disting­ uished from the profane? His first answer was: reflective judgments made about reality always distinguish gradations or hierarchy of value. Human reality is neither simple nor homogeneous; rather, rankings and invidious status distinc­ tions of higher and lower, are perennially made. Clearly, greater dignity and honor--in short, va1ue--are accorded to those things which come as if "from on high." One might be tempted, first of all, to define them by the place they are generally assigned in the hierarchy of things. They are naturally considered superior in dignity and power to profane things, and particularly to man, when he is only a man and has nothing sacred about him. One thinks of himself as occupying an in­ ferior and dependent position in relation to them; and surely this conception is not without some truth (EF:52-3). Then, Durkheim noted that the respect we accord sacred objects, places, and times differs greatly from the practical attitude by which we regard common, everyday things. The sentiments which they inspire in us differ from those we have for simple visible objects. As long as these latter are reduced to their empirical charact­ eristics as shown in ordinary experience, and as long as the religious imagination has not metamorphosed them, we entertain for them no feeling which resembles respect, and they contain within them nothing that is able to raise us outside ourselves. Therefore, the represen­ tations which express them appear to us to be very dif­ ferent from those aroused in us by collective influen­ ces. The two form two distinct and separate mental states in our consciousness, just as do the two forms of life to which they correspond. Consequently, we get the impression that we are in relations with two dis­ tinct sorts of reality and that a sharply drawn line of demarcation separates them from each other: on the one hand is the world of profane things, on the other, that of sacred things (EF:243). Further, Durkheim argued that this unique capacity of society to construct anchors of our existence, to demarcate our lives and attitudes mto two organized and opposing camps, is not limited to aboriginal societies. Rather, the ability to define some things as worthy of respect and others as de­ serving of "damnation," is a generic capacity of all societ­ ies in all times and places. • • • • • • • • • • • --133-­ In the present day just as much as in the past, we see society constantly creating sacred things out of ordi­ nary ones. If it happens to fall in love with a man and if it thinks it has found in him the principal aspira­ tions that move it, as well as the means of satisfying them, this man will be raised above the others, and, as it were, deified. Opinion will invest him with a majes­ ty exactly analogous to that protecting the gods .... In addition to men, society also consecrates things, espe­ cially ideas. If a belief is unanimously shared by a peo­ ple, then ... it is forbidden to touch it ... to deny it or contest it. NOw, the prohibition of criticism is an interdiction like the other and proves the presence of something sacred. Even today, howsoever great may be the liberty which we accord to others, a man who should to­ tally deny progress or ridicule the human ideal to which modern societies are attached would produce the effect of a sacrilege. There is at least one principle which those most devoted to free examination of everything tend to place above discussion and to regard as untouch­ able •.. as sacred: this is the very principle of free examination (EF:243-4). However, Durkheim reflected, hierarchical gradation and high moral authority, while necessary elements, are insuffi­ cient by themselves to distinguish sacredness. It is important to note that when Durkheim suggested that hierarchical scales rank phenomena in terms of more or less value, he acknowledged here an underlying gradation by degree. That is, there is a continuum here ranging from extremely sacred to neutral to ex­ tremely profane. Indeed, Durkheim admitted: "It must not be lost to view that there are sacred things of every degree, and that there are some in relation to which a man feels himself relatively at his ease" (EF:53). Thus, I believe that Evans­ Pritchard's (1965) and W. H. Stanner's(1967) objections to Durk­ heim's seemingly rigid dichotomy between sacred and profane are lessened. In summarizing the two extremes of the sociocultural hierarchy of valuation, Durkheim next argued that an addition­ al key criterion distinguishing sacredness from profaneness is their radical polar opposition to one another. Durkheim appear­ ed to argue here in rather static and categorical terms that the opposition between these two poles is absolute. Such a statement, however, as numerous critics of this aspect of Durk­ • • • • • • • • • • • --134-­ heim's sociology of religion have pointed out, is both theo­ retically and empirically untenable. I believe that taking Durkheim's statements here too literally, simply at face va­ lue, is both unjustified and misleading. But if a purely hierarchical distinction is a criter­ ion at once too general and too imprecise, there is nothing left with which to characterize the sacred in its relation to the profane except their heterogeneity. However, this heterogeneity is sufficient to charact­ erize this classification of things and to distinguish it from all others, because it is very particular: it is absolute (EF:53). -­ However, again Durkheim's rhetorical animus was responsible here for this seeming over-statement. The most viable meaning of Durkheim's notion of the absoluteness of the opposition be­ tween the sacred and the profane is that their polar relation­ ship is an absolute societal universal. In other words, while their opposition is relational--not rigid and absolute, none­ theless, it is true that their polar opposition is a cultural universal. However, my attempted rescue of Durkheim from his polem­ ical indiscretions is. partially restricted by his penchant for rhetorical excess. Had he not (I believe mistakenly) identi­ fied the ego and utilitarian activity with the profane, Durk­ heim would not have made the following revealing statement: In the history of human thought there exists no other example of two categories of things so profoundly dif­ ferentiated or so radically opposed to one another. The traditional opposition of good and bad is nothing beside this; for the good and the bad are only two op­ posed species of the same class, namely morals, just as sickness and health are two different aspects of the same order of facts, life, while the sacred and profane have always and everywhere been conceived by the human mind as two distinct classes, as two worlds between which there is nothing in common (EF:53-4). Had Durkheim set his anti-utilitarian polemics aside and rested content with the universal opposition between good and evil, truth and error, the pure and the impure, order and chaos, and so forth, he would have spared himself much undeserved op­ probium and us much confusion. While his rhetorical excess led him astray, his underlying purpose comes through clearly enough • • • • • • • • • • • --135-­ in the following passage: We cannot give ourselves up entirely to the ideal be­ ings to whom the cult is addressed and also to ourselves and our own interests at the same time; we cannot devote ourselves entirely to the group and entirely to our own egoism at once (EF:356). When Durkheim set his programmatic statements aside and returned to description rather than polemic, his real inten­ tions and empirical concerns prevailed. For instance, I find little that is objectionable in the following quote: The forces which play in one area are not simply those which are met witn in the other, but a little stronger; they are of a different sort. In different religions, this opposition has been conceived in different ways. Here, to separate these two sorts of things, it has seemed sufficient to localize them in different parts of the physical universe; there, the first have been put into an ideal and transcendental world, while the material world is left in full possession of the others. But howsoever much the forms of contrast may vary, the fact of the contrast is universal (EF:54). In short, as I earlier argued, although the symbolic contents of this opposition may vary, the "fact of the contrast" between the sacred and the profane is a cultural universal. This uni­ versal attribute gives rise to Durkheim's definition of reli­ gious phenomena. The real characteristic of religious phenomena is that they always suppose a bipartite division of the whole universe, known and ;{nowable, into two classes which em­ brace all that exists, but which radically exclude each other. Sacred things are those which the interdictions protect and isolate; profane things, those to which these interdictions are applied and which must remain at a distance from the first. Religious beliefs are the representations which express the nature of sacred things and the relations which they sustain, either with each other or with profane things. Finally, rites are the rules of conduct which prescribe how a man should com­ port himself in the presence of these sacred objects. When a certain number of sacred things sustain relations of coordination or subordination with each other in such a way as to form a system having a certain unity, but which is not comprised within any other system of the same sort, the totality of these beliefs and their cor­ responding rites constitutes a religion (EF:56). • • --136-­ c. The Contagiousness of the Sacred Earlier analogies likening the sacred with various • energy forms and flows suggest what Durkheim meant when he referred to the "contagiousness of sacred forces," as ano­ ther of their distinguishing qualities. Like a sort of "sacred electricity," those phenonena endowed with "charismatic ener­ • gy" reveal great elusiveness and fluidity. "A sacred charact­ er is to a high degree contagious" (EF:254). The sacred is first and foremost to be regarded as an energizing force; its very intensity "incites it to spreading" (EF:363). • This extraordinary intensity and diffuseness of "sacred electricity" has at least two important consequences. First, it requires that the profane be isolated from the sacred, thus giving rise to myriad boundary-making efforts; second, • as the sacred energy flows and spreads, it tends to organize the whole life of the group into a symbolically aligned mi­ crocosm of the universe. We shall discuss the first aspect now, and come back to the "global" nature of sacred-profane • symbolic cosmization shortly. It is important to note, moveover, that the constant ef­ fort directed toward isolating and prohibiting contact between these opposing forces is largely intended to protect the sacred • from con-fusion with the profane. The energetic contagiousness of the sacred requires that it be bottled up, as it were, and held in its most potent and pure state. If the sacred refers to the sum total of all the aspects of the virtuous side of • the universal dichotomy, then, as the focal or gathering point of these sacred energies, it is necessary to maintain its clarity and undiluted potency. Indeed, this is precisely what • is referred to in the etymological meaning of profane-­ pro-fanum -- that which is outside the temple. • Durkheim's analysis of totemism rests on this underly­ ing notion of a primal undifferentiated "sacred electricity." Of the American Indians, Durkheim commented: "Now the common principle of life is the wakan. The totem is the means by which an individual is put into relations with this source of • • • • • • • • • • • --137':"'­ energy; if the totem has any powers, it is because it incar­ nates the wakan" (EF:224). Indeed, the wakan or charisma­ tic force is: ... the original matter out of which have been con­ structed those beings of every sort which the reli­ gions of all times have consecrated and adored. The spirits, demons, genii, and gods of every sort are only the concrete forms taken by this energy, or "potentiality" in individualizing itself, in fixing itself upon a certain determined object or point in space, or in centering itself around an ideal and legendary being (EF:228). It should be noted, in passing, that Durkheim's description of the "essential consubstantiality of all sacred things" and the "fluidi ty" of sacred energies converges closely wi th Weber's description of charisma and the evolution of the gods in his magisterial The Sociology of Religion (1963,1968). Durkheim's proposition that " ... the wakan .•. comes and goes through the world, and sacred things are the points upon which it a­ lights" (EF:228-Q' could have been written by Weber, or per­ haps it was the other way around, as Mauss once insisted (see R. Aron, 1967: 271; E. Tiryakian, 1966:332, #7). Durkheim's evolutionism was so strong that he discerned this primal, undifferentiated flow of sacred energy as lying back of all the more crystallized spirits and gods. Instead of gods at the origin of religious life, Durkheim discovered "indefinite, anonymous forces," and it is for this reason that he refused to define religion solely in terms of gods. We are now in a better condition to understand why it has been impossible to define religion by the idea of mythical personalities, gods, or spirits; it is be­ cause this way of representing religious things is in no way inherent in their nature. What we find at the origin and basis of religious thought are not deter­ mined and distinct objects and beings possessing a sa­ cred character of themselves; they are indefinite po­ wers, anonymous forces, more or less numerous in dif­ ferent societies, and sometimes even reduced to a unity, and whose impersonality is strictly comparable to that of the physical forces whose manifestations the sciences of nature study. As for particular sacred things, they are only individualized forms of this essential princi­ ple .•.• Even the most elementary mythological construct­ ions are secondary products which cover a system of be­ • • • • • • • • • • • --1:38-­ liefs, at once simpler and more obscure, vaguer, and more essential, which form the solid foundations upon which the religious systems are built. It is this prim­ itive foundation which our analysis of totemism has en­ abled us to reach (EF:229, 232). Additionally, Durkheim noted that the sacred and the profane are not simply defined by the obligatory respect due to the former. Rather, their active antagonism implies that the universality of the rigorous systems of interdictions serve to "close one sphere to another," for "between them there is an abyss" (EF:357). The particular reason for this "exceptional isolation and mutual exclusion" "Nhi.ch Durkheim found in the "contagious" nature of sacred phenomena, and thus the corresponding need to keep these anchors of socio­ cultural life from being irretrievably confounded one in the other. Thus, there are two forces at work here: the conta­ giousness of the "sacred electricity," and the sort of random­ izing entropy characterizing all energy flows . ..• by a sort of contradiction, the sacred world is in­ clined, as it were, to spread itself into this same pro­ fane world which it excludes elsewhere; at the same time that it repels it, it tends to flow into it as soon as it approaches. This is why it is necessary to keep them at a distance from one another and to create a sort of vacuum between them. What makes these precautions ne­ cessary is the extraordinary contagiousness of a sacred character. Far from being attached to the things which are marked with it, it is endowed with a sort of elu­ siveness. Even the m()!=;+: superficial or roundabout con­ tact is sufficient to enable it to spread from one ob­ ject to another. Religious forces are represented in the mind in such a way that they always seem to es­ cape from the points where they reside and to enter every­ thing passing within their range .•.. It is also upon this principle of the contagiousness of sacredness that all the ritesofconsecration repose. The sanctity of the churinga is so great that is action is even felt at a distance (EF:358). Because of the contagiousness of this charismatic ener­ gy, Durkheim next explored the whole system of interdictions which spread out like reversed magnets from the ritual core throughout the whole fabric of social life. The pure is like a distilled precipitate that only retains its unique quali­ ties and potencies when isolated and concentrated. Since, if • • • • • • • • • • • --139-­ left to themselves the sacred and profane would confound themselves in the generic flow of life and existence, social interdictions or taboos become necessary to maintain their separate identities. Like survey markers continuously erased by time and circumstance, the boundary lines between the pure and the impure, between order and chaos, must be constantly maintained and periodically realigned. Dirt, weeds, noise, chance, ugliness, and so on, these and other phenomena which constantly threaten the clear outlines and meaningful patterns of our axial organizing coordinates must be controlled and in­ terdicted. Since, in virtue of this extraordinary power of expan­ sion, the slightest contact, the least proximity, either material or simply moral, suffices to draw religious forces out of their domain, and since, on the other hand, they cannot leave it without contradicting their nature, a whole system of measures is indispensable for maintain­ ing the two worlds at a respectful distance from one ano­ ther. This is why it is forbidden to the profane, not only to touch, but even to see or hear that which is sa­ cred, and why these two sorts of life cannot be mixed in their consciousnesses. Precautions are necessary to keep them apart because, though opposing one another, they tend to confuse themselves into one another (EF:359-60). Finally, I must insist that this passage clarifies some of the intellectual controversies which have swirled around these points. First, contrary to Durkheim's earlier extreme "abso­ lutistic" statements, and contrary to Stanner's and Evans­ Pritchard's acceptance of these rhetorical excesses at their face value, in his more empirically descriptive work Durkheim never radically dichotomized these polarities nor rigidly ab­ solutized their universal opposition. For if there can really be no contact between the sacred and the profane, what need have we then of interdicting their possible confusion? Further, what need would we have of rites that transform one category into another? Indeed, as we shall see, religious life is only possible and even necessary if there is at least the possibil­ ity of continuous contact and threats of confounding the sa­ cred with the profane. Much tension in sociocultural life depends upon just this risk of confusion and pollution; • • --140-­ the irony of the human condition depends on it. Second, it is clear that the meaning of their interdicted separation is • to maintain the axial boundaries, the survey markers on the base map of culture. Third, these cultural maps are not sole­ ly cognitive, but also simultaneously moral, emotional, and imaginative as well. • d. Pollution and Walling Off the Profane: The Negative or Ascetic Rites Beyond the contagiousness of the sacred, and the need to • keep it potent in its concentrated, pure form, there is also need to keep profaneness segregated from the sacred. Not only must these elements not be allowed to mix and confound them­ selves in the homogeneity of life, but they must also be wal­ • led off, as it were, from each other if the order of the mi­ crocosm is to maintained. This is the function (or consequence) of the negative or ascetic rites. If harmony in the cosmos is to be maintained, the relationships between the sacred and the • profane, in terms of the alignment of the microcosm with the macrocosm, must be continuously regulated and reaffirmed. Through these ascetic or regulatory rites, we establish and reinforce boundaries separating the profane from the sacred. • Naturally, these interdictions spread to the whole of socio­ cultural life. Time, space, objects, events, people, and so forth, in short, all aspects of life, become classified, se­ parated, and re-articulated in terms of the fundamental an­ • chor of oppositions between sacred and profane. The whole • world becomes valorized, that is, society progressively imposes positive, negative (and neutral) valences on all details of existence. In genetic-evolutionary terms, it is important to note • how primitive societies thus tend to become hedged in by ri­ tual prescriptions and proscriptions. Sacral and magical ta­ boos come to permeate tribal life. Questions of right and wrong, of truth and error, become inextricably bound up with the cosmic consciousness reflected in the mirror of the micro­ • • --141 .... - .. cosmic conscience. Sin, guilt, and pollution come from vio­ lating the boundaries between sacred and profane. Disturban­ • ces of the harmonious relations between macro and microcosm in bringing illness, attack, bad weather, etc., threaten the entire society. Thus, the first major forms of deviance are those of the "religious criminal" whose violation of the • norms laid down by the collective conscience must be strong­ ly repressed. As noted, profaneness and deviance are inti­ mately intertwined. Moreover, the interdiction or prohibition of contact itself becomes sacrosanct, so that the rule in­ • stead of the actual violation becomes gradually sanctioned. Thus, the image rather than the event gradually takes over, giving rise to all those more or less "irrational" restrict­ ive practices surviving long after their original reason for • being has been lost forever to memory. Now, the contact between sacred and profane is both in­ evitable and even necessary. In view of their opposition and prescribed separation, this prohibited mixing might seem para­ • doxical. Yet, we should always remember that these are rela­ tional polarities; if there were absolutely no contact possi­ ble between them, we would have no way of contrasting them, and thus, even of identifying them as universal contraries. It is only because, prior to conscious and systematic reflect­ ion, they are simply bound up with the mix and flow of every­ day life. Paradoxically, it is only ~ profanations and de­ filements that we are able to separate out the sacred from • the non-sacred in the first place. Second, however, beyond the inevitable pollutions of the pure and creative sources of life, points of communion must be possible if we are to regularly experience re-creation by the energizing powers of • "sacred electricity" in our daily lives. There must be regu­ larly scheduled passages from the profane to the sacred world, and back again. If these "doors II do not open, the crucial links binding the micro to the macrocosm would be fatally snapped. Even while it tends to permeate life because of its • --142-­• fluidity and contagiousness, the sacred or positive pole of sociocultural life is also separated and protected. Sacred • things are, by definition, a "world apart." By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break in continuity between them and the profane beings •••. A whole group of rites has the object of • of realizing this state of separation which is es­ sential. Since their function is to prevent undue mixings and to keep one of these two domains from encroaching upon the other, they are only able to impose abstentions or negative acts •.• taboos •.. interdictions (EF:337-8). • Thus, things worthy of respect must be protected from con­ tamination with things of little or negative value. In short, the fundamental classificatory principle is that things of unequal value must be separated. This principle is especially • important because of the tendency of the sacred to spread by virtue of its own energy, and thus to confound itself in les­ ser states of being. All that is sacred is the object of respect, and every • sentiment of respect is translated in him who feels it, by moveme~ts of inhibition. In fact, a respected being is always expressed in the consciousness by a represen­ tation which, owi~g to the emotion which it inspires, is charged with a high mental energy: consequently, it is armed in such a way as to reject to a distance every • other representation which denies it in whole or in part. • Now, the sacred world and the profane world are antagon­ istic to each other. They correspond to two forms of life which mutually exclude each other, or which at least can­ not be lived at the same time with the same intensity. We cannot give ourselves up entirely to the ideal to whom the cult is addressed and also to ourselves and our own interests at the same time: we cannot devote ourselves entirely to the qroup and entirely to our own egoism at once (EF: 356-7) • Now, the critical factor is not the separation of sacred and • profane beings or things in the external world, for life it­ self combines both poles of existence inextricably in its on­ ward flow. Indeed, since the origin of these separations which we project outward and imprint upon the world is really cul­ • ture and mind, the crucial theater of war between sacred and profane lies within man himself. The interdiction is, first • • • • • • • • • --143-­ and foremost, ~ phenomenological injunction that man directs toward his own conscience and consciousness, towards his own imagination and will. Here there are two systems of conscious states which are directed and which direct our conduct toward op­ posite poles. So the one having the greater power of action should tend to exclude the other from the con­ sciousness. When we think of holy things, the idea of a profane object cannot enter the mind without encoun­ tering grave resistance; something within us opposes itself to its installation. This is because the repre­ sentation of a sacred thing does not tolerate neigh­ bors. But this psychic antagonism and this mutual ex­ clusion of ideas should naturally result in the exclu­ sion of the corresponding things. If the ideas are not to coexist, the things must not touch each other or have any sort of relations. This is the very principle of the interdict (EF:357). Both thought and action must be different in the pres­ ence of sacred things. Sacred places, sacred times, impose their own norms and appropriate behaviors. One need not be told how to act in a sacred place, for instance; it issues its own requirements; indeed, a fully socialized adult would not think of profaning a church, temple, courtroom, hospital, historical site, etc., regardless of whether or not others are there at the same time to sanction potential deviance. Since it (the sacred) is opposed to the profane world . .• it must be treated in its own peculiar way: it would be a misunderstanding of its nature and d confu­ sion of it with something that it is not, to make use of the gestures, language, and attitudes which we em­ ploy in our relations with ordinary things .... We may handle the former freely; we speak freely to vulgar beings; so we do not touch the sacred beings, or we touch them only with reserve; we do not speak in their presence, or we do not speak the common language there. All that is used in our commerce with the one must be excluded from our commerce with the other (EF:357). Now, there are various kinds of taboos meant to separate the sacred from the non-sacred. For not even the sacred is a homogeneous category. First, we must distinguish between var­ ious degrees and types of sacredness; for example, greater • and lesser forms of charismatic power, and their differentia­ tion by task • • • --144-­ • • • • • • • • • •.• there are interdictions of different sorts which it is important to distinguish ..•. These interdictions are intended to prevent all communication between the purely sacred and the impurely sacred, between the sa­ credly auspicious and the sacredly inauspicious. All these interdictions ... corne from the fact ~~~~there are inequalities and incompatibilities between sacred things (EF:338, 340). Especially important here are the oppositions between magical and religious taboos. Durkheim distinguishej between magical and religious interdictions in terms of the differing reasons for their respective sanctions. First of all, beside those corning from religion, there are others which are due to magic. The two have this in common, that they declare certain things incompatible, and prescribe the separation of the things whose incom­ patibility is thus proclaimed. But there are also very grave differences between them. In the first place, the sanctions are not the same in the two cases (EF:338). According to Durkheim, magical sanctions revenge violation of taboo in an automatic fashion, as if it were a mechanical fact. Religious sanctions, over and above the seemingly mechanical retribution forthcoming to all violations, adds a real socio­ cultural and psychological punishment. There is no "sin" in magic, and therefore no need for re-definition of self and internalization of guilt . ... the violation of the religious interdicts is fre­ quently believed .•. to bring about material disorders mechanically, from which the guilty man will suffer, and which are regarded as a judgement on his own act. But even if these really carne about this spontaneous and automatic judgement is not the only one; it is al­ ways completed by another one, supposing human inter­ vention. A real punishment is added to this, if it does not anticipate it, and this one is deliberately inflict­ ed by men; or at least there is a blame and reprobation. Even when the sacrilege has been punished, as it were, by the sickness or natural death of its author, it is also defamed; it offends opinion which reacts against it; it puts the man who did it in fault. On the con­ trary, the magical interdiction is judged only by the material consequences which the forbidden act is be­ lieved to produce, with a sort of physical necessity. In disobeying, a man runs risks similar to those which an invalid exposes himself in not following the~~vice of his physician; but in this case disobedience is not a fault; it creates no indignation. There is no sin in magic (EF:338-9). • ---- ---------- • • • • • • • • • • --145-­ Continuing the contrast, Durkheim proposed that magic is basically asocial, and therefore nonnormative; it relates mainly to the factual or behavioral order. Religious inter­ dictions, by contrast, are primarily concerned with the so­ ciocultural and phenomenological order of IIsacredness.1I Ma­ gical proscriptions, on the other hand, are concerned main­ ly with the technical impropriety of linking inappropriate profane utilities. In sum, religious interdictions are ethical II categorical imperatives,1I while magical interdictions are IItechnical" recipes. This difference in sanction is due to profound differ­ ence in the nature of the interdictions. The religious interdiction necessarily implies the notion of sacred­ ness; it comes from the respect inspired by the sacred object, and its purpose is to keep this respect from failing. On the other hand, the interdictions of magic suppose only a wholly lay notion of property. The things which the magician recommends be kept separate are those which, by reason of their characteristic properties, can­ not be brought together and confused without danger .... Magic lives on profanations ... and reasons of temporal utility. In a word, religious interdictions are categor­ ical imperatives; others are useful maxims, the first form of hygienic and medical interdictions. We cannot study two orders of facts as different as these simul­ taneously, or even under the same name, without confu­ sion. We are only concerned with religious interdict­ ions here (EF:339). However, even with these basic distinctions, Durkheim acknow­ ledged that magical and sacral interdictions are continuous in other respects. For Durkheim made magical taboos a deriva­ tive subset of sacral-social ones. This is not saying that there is a radical break in continuity between the religous and the magical in­ terdictions: on the contrary, it is one whose true na­ ture is not decided .•.. Magical interdicts cannot be understood except as a function of the religious ones (EF : 339, #5) . This kinship is true regardless of whether the technical pro­ hibition carne first and then was subsequently secularized, or whether it was first sacral and then only later became de-sac­ ralized, yet was still customarily observed. In short, magical taboos are directed primarily toward cognitive norms of con­ sciousness, while sacral taboos are directed mainly toward • • • • • • • • • • • --146-­ ethical norms of conscience. As always, questions of con­ science and right action tend to override questions of con­ sciousness and right thinking. Having thus set aside magical taboo from prime consi­ deration, Durkheim next briefly distinguished between types of sacral interdictions. Recognizing that there are degrees of sacredness, Durkheim noted that " ... the more sacred re­ pels the less sacred" (EF:341). Thus, all the interdictions " arrange themselves into two classes: the interdictions between the sacred and the profane, and the purely or the im­ purely sacred" (EF:341) . ... the most imp~rtant interdictions .•. are intend­ ed to prevent all communication between the purely sa­ cred and the impurely sacred, between the sacredly in­ auspicious and the sacredly inauspicious. All these in­ terdictions have one common characteristic; they come not from the fact that some things are sacred while oth­ ers are not, but from the fact that there are inequali­ ties and incompatibilities between sacred things (EF:340). But Durkheim also set aside these various types of interdict­ ions, as not really touching "what is essential in the idea of sacredness." Such observances could not lead to Durkheim's central sociological interest, namely, the cult or moral com­ munity and its collectively representational rites. All his statements concerning the radical abyss separating the sacred and the profane aside, we must remember that Durkheim here in­ sisted: "Before all, a cult is made by regular relations be­ tween the profane and the sacred" (EF:340). Durkheim next turned our attention to the center of his interest: those interdicts prohibiting contact between the sa­ cred and the profane. Again, it is important to note that the setting of these crucial boundaries is a one-directional pro­ cess, for it is the sacred which defines both its boundaries, and also walls off the profane. The profane may threaten the sacred and the order of the microcosm, but only sacral symbol­ ism and action is sufficient to organize the world and main­ tain the all-important harmonious relations between microcosm and macrocosm . • • • • • • • • • • • --147-­ ... there is another system of religious interdictions which is much more extended and important; this is the one which separates, not different species of sacred things, but all that is sacred from all that is pro­ fane. So it is derived immediately from the notion of sacredness itself, and it limits itself to expressing and realizing this. Thus, it furnishes the material for a veritable cult, and even of a cult which is at the ba­ sis of all the others; for the attitude which it pre­ scribes is one which the worshipper must never depart from in all his relations with the sacred. It is what we call the negative cult. We may say that its inter­ dicts are the religious interdicts par excellence (EF: - 340). e. Types of Sacral Interdictions Sacral interdictions which seek to separate and restrict the profane from the sacred are the focus of religious cults. The ritual is the means by which the cult implements these in­ terdictions. Durkheim called this the negative or ascetic cult. These interdictions can take multiple forms. The preeminent taboos are those concerned with restricting contact between these two constructed anchors of sociocultural life . Before all are the interdictions of contact: these are the original taboos, of which the others are scarcely more than particular varieties. They rest upon the prin­ ciple that the profane should never touch the sacred (EF: 341) . Under certain circumstances, contact with blood, hair, corpses, and so on, is forbidden, as the contact is unholy. Clearly perilous to violation are alimentary interdict­ ions, especially those concerning the consumption of totemic life. An exceptionally intimate contact is the one resulting from the absorption of food. Hence comes the interdict­ ion against the sacred animals or vegetables, and espe­ cially against those serving as totems. Such an act ap­ pears so sacrilegeous that the prohibition covers even adults .•. only the old men attain a sufficient reli­ gious dignity to escape this interdict sometimes (341-2). Now, this prohibition works both ways--sacred foods are for­ bidden to the profane, and profane foods are forbidden to those considered sacred. Moveover, we see emerging here a kind of cosmization of food and human diet. Those who take up • --148-­ • full-time religious status, or as Weber said "take a lease on charisma," as professional ascetics or religious virtuosos, inevitably make a systematic, symbolically aligned, and res­ tricted diet part of their methodical regimen . • ... if certain foods are forbidden to the profane be­ cause they are sacred, certain others, on the contrary, are forbidden to persons of a sacred character, because • they are profane. Thus, it frequently happens that cer­ tain animals are especially designated as the food of women; for this reason they believe that they partake of a feminine nature and they are consequently profane. On the other hand, the young initiate is submitted to a series of rites of particular severity; to give him • the virtues which will enable him to enter into the world of sacred things, from which he had up until then been excluded, they center an exceptionally powerful group of religious forces upon him. Thus, he enters into a state of sanctity which keeps all that is profane at a distance. Then he is not allowed to eat the game • which is regarded as the special food of women (EF:342). The old aphorism "you are what you eat" reminds us that diet, in both meanings of the term, has often become a prime spiri­ tual technology. As an ascetic regimen, the dieter purposely restricts his nutritional intake to some predetermined mini­ mum; as a means of building himself and his disposition, the dieter attempts to align the type of character he wishes to • embrace with the type of foods symbolically associated with • those specific attributes. This serves as an excellent exam­ ple of sociocultural norms organizing and directing lower bio­ physiological levels; or in Levi-Strauss1s terms, of culture organizing nature • Certainly, other types of contact are forbidden also. Visual recognition, for example: One comes into relations with a thing merely by regard­ ing it: a look is a means of contact. This is why the • sight of a sacred thing is forbidden to the profane in certain cases. A woman should never see the instruments of the cult (EF:342). The contagiousness of the sacred, and the potential defilement of it by the profane, means that even verbal contact may be • dangerous. The word is another way of entering into relations with persons or things. The breath establishes a communica­ • • --149-­ • tion; this is the part of us which spreads outwards. Thus it is forbidden to the profane to address the sacred beings or simply to speak in their presence .... Besides the sacred things, there are words and sounds • which have the same character; they should not pass the lips of the profane nor enter their ears. There are ritual songs which women must not hear under pain of death. They may hear the noise of the bull-roarers, but only from a distance. Every proper name is consi­ • dered an essential element of the person who bears it; being closely associated in the mind to the idea of this person, it participates in the sentiments which the latter inspires. So if the one is sacred, the other is too. Therefore, it may not be pronounced in the cour­ se of the profane life (EF:343-4). Moreover, in religious ritual, men often acquire another name, a special designation that not only signifies their new or re­ born status, but also replaces their ordinary or profane names • for sacral purposes. • In addition to their public and everyday names, all men have another which is kept a sec~et: the women and child­ ren do not know it; it is never used in the ordinary life . .•. Th6re are ceremonies during which it is necessary to speak a special language which must not be used for pro­ fane purposes. It is the beginning of a sacred language (EF:344). In addition, the common profane appearance must often be set aside--men shave, are forced to strip naked, or • put on special ritual costumes which signify their change of being. When approaching the sacred,men must put aside their common, ordinary selves, and thus the things signifying this profane style of life must also be set aside. • Not only are the sacred things separated from the pro­ fane, but also nothing which either directly or indi­ rectly concerns the profane life should be confused with the religious life. Complete nudity is frequent­ ly demanded of the native as a prerequisite to being admitted to participation in the rites; he is required • to strip himself of all his habitual ornaments ..•. If he is obliged to decorate himself to play his part in ritual, this decoration has to made especially for the occasion; it is forbidden to use them in profane affairs; when the ceremony is finished, they are buried or burnt (EF : 34 4 - 5) • • Not only must the outward appearance of the self be changed when approaching the sacred, but moreover, common and • • • • • • • • --150-'­ ordinary everyday activities must also be suspended. Thus, society constructs not merely personality structures, but also time and spatial structure. The temporal rhythms of everyday life revolve around these alternating phases of sa­ cred high intensity rites and everyday practical dispersal. In general~;~cts characteristic of the ordinary life are forbidden while those of the religious life are taking place. The act of eating is, of itself, profane; for it takes place every day, it satisfies essentially utilitarian and material needs, and it is a p~rt of out ordinary existence. This is why it is prohoited in religious times (EF:345). Thus, time is punctuated by the extraordinary effervescence of the collective rites. As Halbwachs later showed, even the frameworks of memory and anticipation have a social and cult­ ural character. In later societies, of course, it was the reli­ giously sanctioned day of celebration, recollection, and re­ creation that came to anchor the weekly work cycle . .•. all temporal occupations are suspended while the great religious solemnities are taking place •..• The life of the Australian is divided into two very dis­ tinct parts: the one is devoted to hunting, fishing, and warfare; the other is consecrated to the cult and these two forms of activity mutually exclude and repel one another. It is on this principle that the universal institution of religious days of rest reposes. The dis­ tinctive character of the feast days in all known reli­ gions is the cessation of work and the suspension of public and private life, insofar as it does not a reli­ gious objective (EF:345). Once again, however,we see that in counterposing religious and economic activity, Durkheim got himself in the bind of presuming that the former is social and normatively control­ led and the latter is not. If work is indeed the preeminent form of profane activity, then should we not be interested in the ways in which it becomes sacralized? And, in turn, the way in which the workaday rhythms tend to "secularize" the sacred? work is an eminent form of profane activity: it • has no other apparent end than to provide for the temporal necessities of life; it puts us in rela­ tions with ordinary things only. On feast days, on the contrary, the religious life attains an excep­ • • • • • • • • • • • --151-­ tional degree of intensity. So the contrast between the two forms of existence is especially marked at this moment; consequently, they cannot remain near each other. A man cannot approach his god intimately while he still bears on him marks of his profane life: inversely, he cannot return to his usual occupations when a rite has just sanctified him. So the ritual&y of rest is only one particular case of the general in­ compatibility separating the sacred from the profane: it is the result of an interdiction (EF:346). The need for separation takes another form--spatial. For example, certain places are inevitably set aside as spe­ cial residences of the sacred. Sanctuaries and cultic ground tend to become "churches" and "temples" in the sense of holy places and facilities. The sacred character of the churinga is so great that it communicates itself to the locality where they are stored: the women and the uninitiated cannot approach it. The religious nature radiates to a distance and com­ municates itself to all the surroundings: everything near by participates in this same nature and is there­ fore withdrawn from profane touch. Is one man pursued by another? If he succeeds in reaching the (sanctuary) he is saved; he cannot be seized there. Even a wounded animal which takes refuge there must be respected. Quar­ rels are forbidden there. It is a place of peace •.. a sanctuary of the totemic group, a veritable place of asylum (EF:142). The critical factor here to note is how these interdictions become basic temporal, spatial, and cultural anchors of every­ day life. Nature is moralized by culture: in turn, society andculture are cosmicized by nature. Therefore, the very frameworks of sociocultural life are constructed out of the more or less systematic application of these ramifying sacred/ profane oppositions. Durkheim noted that even granting the complexity of these myriad interdictions, they finally rest upon "two fundamental interdictions, which summarize and dominate" (EF:346), sociocultural life. In the first place, the religious life and the profane life cannot coexist in the same place. If the former is to develop, a special spot must be placed at its disposi­ tion, from which the second is excluded. Hence comes the founding of temples and sanctuaries: these are the spots awarded to sacred beings and things and serve them as res­ idences, for they cannot establish themselves in any place • • --152-­ except on the condition of entirely appropriating to themselves all within a certain distance. Such arrange­ ments are so indispensable to all religious life that • even the most inferior religions cannot do without them. The spot where the churinga are deposited is a veritable sanctuary. So the unintiated are not allowed to approach it. It is even forbidden to carryon any profane occupa­ tion whatsoever there ••.• Likewise the religious time and the profane time cannot coexist in the same unit of • time. It is necessary to assign determined days or per­ iods to the first, from which all profane occupations are excluded. Thus feast days are born. There is no re­ ligion and, consequently, no society which has not known and practiced this division of time into two distinct parts, alternating with one another according to a law • varying with peoples and civilizations (EF:346-7). We shall soon return to the progressive extension of the sa­ cred/profane oppositions throughout the whole of sociocultur­ al life. Let us now briefly turn our • from fluid to crystallized symbolism, of these sacral symbolic forms. • • • • • • attention to the passage and the autonomization • --153-­ 6. Crystallization and Autonomization of Symbolism • "The images of totemic beings ~~ sacred than the • beings themselves" (EF:156). Almost inevitably, due to the al­ ternating rhythms of sociocultural process, and the contagious­ ness of sacred symbols, the significance originally attached to the newly moralized group gradually becomes transferred to the • image of the group. Since such symbols represent the collectiv­ ity to itself, they become the basis of the cultural bond. Social interaction is always symbolic, as every introduct­ ory student learns. By attaining a certain stability, these sa­ • cral collective representations enable the group to perdure. Since consciences and consciousnesses are constructed through the medium of symbolic process, persons ground themselves in these group symbols as the anchor of their existence. In this • long and complex process, the collectively projected image be­ comes more sacred than the group event which it first symboli­ zed. Inevitably, the fluid and shifting collective representa­ tions become detached from their processual origins, and cry­ stallize into relatively permanent symbolic forms. In short, symbolism always tends to become autonomous. The irony of this necessary generic process of displacement, substitution, and • autonomization should, however, not be overlooked (eg. see Simmel, 1950). • Given the inevitable alternating rhythms of sociocultural process, our next task then is to briefly explore some ways in which newly generated symbols gradually become detached from • their processual origins. In effect, Durkheim asked: what hap­ pens to collective symbols when the moral implosion is over? Once generated, does symbolism fade without a continuing under­ lying collective effervescence? On the contrary, since symbol­ • ism is essential to group life, instead of fading, symbols take on increasing significance. Indeed, symbols serve as prime "time-binders" holding groups together through time and space. Let us now turn to explore Durkheim's outline of the fundamen­ tal constitutive sociocultural process whereby cultural sym­ • • --154-­ • boIs, once detached from their original generating matrices, come to take on a life of their own; how, in short, the image comes to take precedence over the underlying represented real-. ity. Let us first consider Durkheim's earlier distinction be­ tween fluid and crystallized symbolism. • a. The Passage From Fluid to Crystallized Symbolism • True to his processual view of society and culture,Durk­ heim had earlier distinguished (eg. in The Rules and Suicide) between fluid and crystallized symbolic representations. Durk­ heim postulated a continuum here, ranging from new and highly fluid sociocultural "currents" (eg. opinion, fad and fashions, movements, etc.) on the one hand, and highly crystallized or stably institutionalized cultural forms such as religious and • moral systems, science, law, and on, on the other hand. As Lukes (1973:10) observed, Durkheim suggested that: • There is a whole series of degrees without a break in continuity between the facts of the most articulated structure and those free currents of social life which not yet definitely molded. The differences between them are, therefore, only differences in the degree of con­ solidation they present. Both are simply life, more or less crystallized (R:12). Close to the beginning of The Rules of Sociological Me­ • thod, for instance, Durkheim emphasized that it is important not to overlook these fluid "social currents." For those look­ ing only to the highly crystallized major cultural systems will presume that symbolic forms must be rooted in some continuing • social organizational base. Durkheim, of course, agreed, but his overarching concern with sociocultural process on all levels of complexity led him to insist that we should attempt to anchor analysis of symbolic forms not so much in terms of a "material • social body" as in a sociocultural process. Thus, if in their early stages sociocultural forms are still shifting and uncer­ tain, then we ought to expect that the symbols which reflect and guide these substructural processes would also be more or • less fluid . • • • • • • • • • • --ISS-­ Since the examples we have just cited (legal and moral regulations, religious faiths, financial systems, etc.) all consist of established beliefs and practices, one might be led to believe that social facts exist only where there is some social organization. But there are other facts without such crystallized form, which have the same objectivity and the same ascendancy over the individual. These are called "social currents. 1I Thus, the great movements of enthusiasm, indignation, and pity in a crowd do not originate in anyone of the part­ icular individual consciousnesses (R:4). Inevitably, however, some of these "fluid ll II social cur­ rents ll become habitualized patterns of social interaction, and thus become institutionalized. Correspondingly, the symbolic forms which represent these social patterns also become stabi­ lized in more stable systems, and thus institutionalized (eg. see Berger and Luckmann, 1966). As often noted, the institu­ tionalization of these sociocultural facts implies that they have become generally shared, continuously transmitted over generations, and obligatorily observed. Durkheim remarked: .•• certain of these social manners of acting and think­ ing acquire, by reason of their repetition, a certain rigidity which on its own account crystallizes them, so to speak, and isolates them from the particular events which reflect them. They thus acquire a body, a tangible form, and constitute a reality in their own right, quite distinct from the individual facts which produce it. Col­ lective habits are inherent not only in the successive acts which they determine but, by a privilege of which we find no example in the biological realm, they are given permanent expression in a formula which is repeat­ ed from mouth to mouth, transmitted by education, and fixed even in writing (R:7). Searching as he was for a definitive index of exterior signs by which to recognize and objectively analyze "social facts,1I in this early attempt in The Rules Durkheim rightly directed attention primarily to institutions and highly crystallized major cultural forms. However, as his approach to positivism shifted from grounding analysis of "moral facts ll in "material bodies ll and II mechanical ll process to grounding analysis in so­ ciocultural, and especially symbolic process (this eVOlution CUlminating in The Elementary Forms), Durkheim correspondingly carne to focus attention on the passage from fluid to crystal­ lized forms, instead of just the latter pole • • • • • • • • • • • • --156-­ social life consists,then, of free currents perpetually in the process of transformation and incapable of being mentally fixed by the observer, and the scholar cannot approach the study of social reality from this angle. But we know that it possesses the power of crystalliza­ tion without ceasing to be itself. Thus, apart from the individual acts to which they give rise, collective ha­ bits find expression in definite forms: legal rules, mo­ ral regulations, popular proverbs, social conventions, etc. As these forms have a permanent existence and do not change with the diverse applications made of them, they constitute a fixed object, a constant standard with­ in the observers reach, exclusive of subjective impres­ sions and purely personal observations (R:45). Now, in Suicide, Durkheim's cultural realism led him along the same lines when he insisted that "collective tenden­ cies have an existence of their own." "Social life is made up of representations" (S:312). Let us reverse his order, and con­ sider fluid "collective representations" first. ... not all social consciousness achieves such external­ ization and materialization. Not all the esthetic spirit of a nation is embodied in the works in inspires; not all morality is formulated in clear precepts. The greater part is diffused. There is a large collective life which is at liberty; all sorts of currents come, go, circulate everywhere, cross and mingle in a thousand different ways, and just because they are constantly mobile are never crys­ tallized in an objective form .... all these eddies, all these fluxes and refluxes occur without a single modifi­ cation of the main legal and moral precepts, immobilized in their sacrosanct forms. Besides, these very precepts merely express a whole subjacent life of which they par­ take; they spring from it but do not supplant it. Beneath all these maxims are actual, living sentiments, summed upby these formula but only in a superficial envelope. The formula would awake no echo if they did not correspond to definite emotions and impressions scattered throughout society (S:3l5). A little earlier Durkheim had noted that society externalizes its attitudes and sentiments in material objects. Thus, for example, a certain style of architecture can be said to "mater­ ialize" a certain cultural sentiment . .•• society •.• also includes material things, which play an essential role in the common life. The social fact is sometimes so far materialized as to become an element of the external world. For instance, a definite type of arch­ itecture is a social phenomenon; but it is partially em­ bodied in houses and buildings of all sorts which, once constructed, become autonomous realities, independent of • • • • • • • • • • • --157-­ individuals. It is the same with the avenues of commun­ ication and transportation, with instruments used in in­ dustry or private life which expresses the state of tech­ nology at any moment in history, of written language, etc. Social life which is thus crystallized, as it were, and fixed on material supports, is by just so much ex­ ternalized, and acts upon us from without (S:3l3-l4). And as we shall discover from his analysis of the Australian materials, as symbolic currents crystallize into systems they tend to take on their own inner nature and form; in short, they grow increasingly autonomous. And, the more these sym­ bolic systems are permeated with religious rationales and magical protocols, the more rigid they become. Some symbolic forms, on the other hand, reveal a special suppleness; these lend themselves to further development and universalization, as we shall discover in Chapter Seven. Durkheim refers to: ... the definite formula into which the dogmas of faith are precipitated, or legal precepts when they become fixed externally in a consecrated form ••. They have a manner of action of their own. Juridical relations are widely different depending on whether or not the law is written. Where there is a constituted code, jurispru­ dence is more regular but less flexible, legislation more uniform but also more rigid. Legislation adopts it­ self less readily to a variety of individual cases, and resists innovations more strongly. The material forms it assumes are thus not merely ineffective verbal combina­ tions but active realities, since they produce effects which would not occur without their existence. They are not merely external to individual consciousnesses, but this very externality establishes their specific quali­ ties. Because these forms are less at the disposal of individuals, individuals cannot readily adjust them to circumstances, and this very situation makes them more resistant to change (S:3l4-l5). Now, closely related to institutionalization of social patterns and crystallization and legitimation of cultural symbolic forms is the process of "sedimentation" or the lay­ ering down of mUltiple levels of symbolic meaning through time. Since society and culture are inter-generational, sen­ timents which gain a certain durability over time may be sed­ imented both in terms of sequence and depth of significance. Some lower levels may even be rediscovered or reappropriated and thence brought up to the level of conscious reflection• • I --158'"-­ Now, it is precisely this complex layering down of cultural elements from various sources and times, and their synergetic fusion, which constitutes the inner secret of that human socio­ cultural historical complex known as civilization. In the rele­ vant sections of The Elementary Forms, for instance, we see Durkheim observing: • In addition to these free forces which are constantly corning to renew our own, there are others which are fixed in the methods and traditions which we employ. We speak a language that we did not make; we use instru­ ments that we did not invent; we invoke rights that we did not found; a treasury of knowledge is transmitted • to each generation that it did not gather itself, etc. It is to society that we owe these varied benefits of civilization .•.. Now it is these things that give man his own place among things; a man is a man only because he is civilized (EF:242-3). • We shall further explore Durkheim's theory of the evolution of • cultural symbolic forms in the following sections: in this Book, the chapters immediately succeeding on "The Tree of Evolution­ ary Life," "The Primitive Sacral Complex,""Durkheim's Notion of Civilizations," and the sections in Book Three, Part I, on the autonomization of collective representations in Durkheim's causal model, and his various transitions to sociocultural real­ ism . • b. The Autonomization of Symbolic Forms • Well before The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Durkheim had already noted the tendency of collective symbolic systems, once institutionalized as the representative ground • of legitimate moral authority and intellectual decision, to grow increasingly autono~ous. Autonomous here means the tenden­ cy to become self-ordering, with its own laws, and developmen­ tal processes. As Weber once similarly remarked, "We are insert­ edintoseparate spheres of existence, each with its own laws." Whereas in Part I of Book Three I shall explore Durkheim's no­ tion of the autonomization of symbolic forms from the methodo­ • logical level, especially from the point of view of his argu­ ment from "relational realism" and "emergence," here I shall • • • • • • • • • --159-­ approach this generic sociocultural process substantively in terms of primitive religion and ritual. It should be noted that as early as The Division of La­ bor, Durkheim had remarked on the tendency toward autonomiza­ tion of the collectively symbolic superstructure . ... wherever a directive power is established, its pri­ mary and principal function is to create respect for the beliefs, traditions, and collective practices; that is, defend the common conscience against all enemies within and without. It thus becomes its symbol, its liv­ ing expression in the eyes of all. Thus, the life which is in the collective conscience is communicated to the directive organ as the affinities of ideas are communi­ cated to the words which represent them, and that is how it assumes a character which puts it above all the others .... It is the collective type incarnate. It participates in the authority which the latter exercises over conscien­ ces, ann it is from these that it draws its force. Once constituted, however, without freeing itself from the sour­ ce when it flows and whence it continues to draw its sus­ tenance, it nevertheless becomes an autonomous factor in social life, capable of spontaneously producing its own movements without equal impulsion, precisely because of the supremacy which it has acquired (DL:84). Now, in The Elementary Forms, Durkheim took care to in­ dicate how the progressive detachment of symbols from the groups which they had come to symbolize occurred. First, the "hyper-spiritual" or moral forces, if they are to truly com­ municate, must gain some external, visible form of expression. The symbolic vehicle for moral and cognitive communion thus inevitably becomes lodged in an external material form or re­ peatable gesture. These visible, external, public signs are taken to manifest inward states. There is an eternal dialect­ ic here between cultural forms and natural forms, for the former are dependent on the latter for their existence, even the one exists only to rise above the other. Moral processes depend upon natural vehicles to externalize the inner process­ es of moral communion which may lead to a linkage, exchange, or even confounding of their separable natures. We might re­ • call that Durkheim had already explored the need for the clan to generate the totem as its prime "collective representation." • • • • • • • • --160-­ Now, by its very nature, the ideal forces must be externalized to become communicated. The vehicle for this moral-logical com­ munion inevitably becomes lodged in a specific material form or gesture. Conversely, the natural symbolic potencies inher­ ent in specific material mediums also feed back and structure the possible symbolic arrangements (eg. see Levi-Strauss, 1963, Victor Turner, 1967, Mary Douglas, 1973). As I have insisted, it is simply mistaken to assert, as Durkheim did along with many others, that symbols are utterly arbitrary and convention­ al. The only adequate way to conceptualize these two poles of culture and nature is as analogical, that is, as a resonating series of more or less parallel matrices of events. It is meta­ phor and analogy which allow us to pass from one to the other in a more or less coherent fashion. Since the clan cannot exist without a name and an emblem, and since this emblem is always before the eyes of men, it is upon this and the objects whose image it is, that the sentiments which society arouses in its members are fixed. Men are thus compelled to represent the collective force, whose action they feel, in the form of the thing serving as flag to the group. Therefore, in the idea of this force were mixed up the most different kingdoms: in one sense, it was essentially human, since it was made up of human ideas and sentiments: but at the same time, it could not fail to appear as closely related to the ani­ mate or inanimate beings who gave it its outward form .... There is no society where it is not active. In a general way, a collective sentiment can become conscious of it­ self only by becoming fixed upon some material object; but by this very fact, it participates in the nature of this object, and reciprocally, the object participates in its nature (EF:269) . Second, this inevitable linkage (or confounding) or moral and material is accelerated by the contagiousness of the sacred images which naturally spread as if propelled by some "sacred electricity" from thing to thing, from event to event. What Durkheim saw as contagiousness also rests, in part, of course, upon the verbal and symbolic mechanisms of metonymy and synec­ doche (see especially the works of K. Burke), by which one • thing comes to represent or "stand for another" in the exten­ sion of specific phenomenological linkages between a moral event and a natural sign, and thus the facilitation of trans­ • • --161-­ :terence of symbolic loads. Asking: "How does it happen that these externalized moral forces come to be thought of in the • form of totems?"--that is, specific plants or animals, Durk­ heim replied: • It is because this animal or plant has given its name to the clan and serves it as an emblem. In fact, it is a well-known law that the sentiments aroused in us by something spontaneously attach themselves to the sym­ bol which represents them. For us, black is a sign of mourning; it also suggests sad impressions and ideas. This transference of sentiments comes simply from the fact that the idea of a thing and the idea of its sym­ bol are closely united in our minds; the result is that • the emotions provoked by the one extend contagiously to • the other. But this contagion, which takes place in every case to some degree, is much more complete and more mark­ ed when the symbol is something simple, definite, and easily representable, while the thing itself, owing to its dimension, the number of its parts, and the complex­ ity of their arrangements, is difficult to hold in the mind. For we are unable to consider an abstract entity, which we represent only laboriously and confusedly the source of the strong sentiments which we feel. We cannot explain them to ourselves except by connecting them to some concrete object of whose reality we are vividly a­ • ware. Then if the thing itself does not fulfill this con­ dition, it cannot serve as the accepted basis of the sen­ timents felt, even though it may be what really aroused them. Then some sign takes its place; it is to this that we connect the emotions it excites. It is this which is loved, feared, and respected; it is to this that we are • are grateful; it is for this that we sacrifice ourselves. The soldi er who dies for his flag, dies for his country; but as a matter of fact, in his own consciousness, it is the flag that has the first place. It sometimes happens that this even directly determines action. Whether one isolated standard remains in the hands of the enemy or • not does not determine the fate of the country; yet the soldier allows himself to be killed to regain it. He lo­ ses sight of the fact that the flag is only a sign and that it has no value in itself, but only brings to mind the reality that it represents; it is treated as if it were this reality itself (EF:251-2). • Third, there is another sense of "contagion" here which is important to the continual attempts to separate out sacral from profane phenomena. For "contagion" also means "dangerous," and because, as Mary Douglas (1966) suggests, "the unclear is • the unclean," the very mixture of sacred and profane symbolism in the onward flow of everyday life means that these boundaries • • --162-­ must be constantly reaffirmed in ever-new ways. The keeping • of the sacra, the esoteric sacred mysterie~ becomes a spe­ cial responsibility of the magicians and priests, those reli­ gious virtuosos who '~ake a lease on charisma," as Weber once said. Mixture is dangerous because it threatens the newly con­ • structed symbolic coordinates of the collectivity itself. If the group depends upon these symbolic coordinates, then their erasure means the collaps~ of the group itself. The churinga are preserved in a sort of temple upon whose threshold all noises from the profane life must • cease; it is the domain of sacred things. On the con­ trary, the totemic animals and plants live in the pro­ fane world and are mixed up with the common everyday life. Since the number and importance of the interdict­ ions which isolate sacred things, and keep it apart, correspond to the degree of sacredness with which it • is invested, we arrive at the remarkable conclusion that the images of totemic beings ~ more sacred than the beings themselves (EF:155-6). Durkheim thus avoided the crude error of some other early anthropological analysts who presumed that the natives actually • worshipped their totemic animals or even the1r totem poles! "In reality, it is not to the animal as such that the (totemic) cult is addressed, but to the emblem and the image of the to­ tem" (EF:198). Specifically, Durkheim observed: • The Arunta dance around the nurtunja, and assemble be­ • fore the image of their totem to adore it, but a simi­ lar demonstration is never made before the totemic be­ ing itself. If this latter were the primarily sacred ob­ ject, it would be with it, the sacred animal or plant, that the young initiate would communicate when he is introduced into the religious life; but we have seen • that, on the contrary, the most solemn moment of the ini tiation is the one when the novice enters into the sanc­ tuary of the churinga. It is with them and the nurtunja that he communicates. The representations of the totem are therefore more actively powerful than the totem it­ self* (EF:156)-.--- ---­ Now, it is evident that the clan is too complex a reality, with all its multiple spheres and levels of relationships and mutual obligations, to be represented clearly and fully by a • single image. The totem is the flag of the clan. It is therefore nat­ ural that the impressions aroused by the clan in indivi­ • • • • • • • --163-­ dual minds--impressions of dependence and of increased vitality--should fix themselves to the idea of totem rather than that of the clan: for the clan is too com­ plex a reality to be represented clearly in all its complex unity by such rudimentary intelligences. More than that, the primitive does not even see that these impressions corne to him from the group. He does not know that the corning together of a number of men asso­ ciated in the same life results in disengaging new ener­ gies, which transforms each of them. All that he knows is that he is raised above himself and that he sees a different life from the one he ordinarily leads. How­ ever, he must connect these sensations to some external object as their cause. Now what does he see about him? On every side those things which appeal to his senses and strike his imagination are the numerous images of the totem. They are the churinga and bull-roarer, upon which are generally carved combinations of lines having the same significance. They are the decorations cover­ ing the different parts of his body, which are totemic marks. How could this image, repeated everywhere and in all sorts of forms, fail to stand out with exceptional relief in his mind? Placed thus in the center of the scene, it becomes representative. The sentiments exper­ ienced fix themselves upon it, for it is the only con­ crete object upon which they can fix themselves. It con­ tinues to bring them to mind and to evoke them after the assembly has dissolved, for it survives the assembly, being carved upon the instruments of the cult, upon the sides of rocks, upon bucklers, etc. By it, the emotions experienced are perpetually sustained and revived. Every­ thing happens just as if they inspired them directly. It is still more natural to attribute them to it for, since they are common to the group, they can be associa­ ted only with something that is equally common to all. Now the totemic emblem is the only thing satisfying this condition. By definition, it is common to all. During the ceremony, it is the center of all regards. While generations change, it remains the same; it is the perm­ ament element of the social life. So it is from it that those mysterious forces seem to emanate with which men feel that they are related, and thus they have been led to represent these forces under the form of the animate or inanimate beings whose name the clan bears (EF:252-3). Given his sociocultural framework, Durkheim interpreted the totem as an external emblematical expression of the inward social bond. The totem signified an inner unifying principle which was expressed in terms of an obligatory sacral symbol. • The totem is the source of the moral life of the clan. All the beings partaking of the same totemic principle consider that owing to this very fact, they are moral­ • --164-~ ly bound to one another; they have definite duties of assistance, vendetta, etc. towards each other, and it is these duties which constitute kinship. So while the • totemic principle is a totemic force, it is also a moral power (EF:2l9). It was this constitutive ground of legitimate moral and intel­ lectual authority of the collective bond and individual con­ • science that the natives revered, argued Durkheim. Lukes apt­ ly summarizes Durkheim's thought in this regard: • The role of the emblems was to perpetuate and recreate the social sentiments aroused by the rites: moreover, the rites themselves enabled social communication to 'become a real communion, that is to say, a fusion of all particular sentiments into one common sentiment,' • and they not only expressed but served to 'support the beliefs upon which they are founded.' Hence, the cult in general was both 'a system of signs by which the faith is outwardly translated,' and 'a collection of the means by which this is created and recreated per­ iodically' .•.. Durkheim saw totemism as essentially con­ • stitutive of aboriginal social organization: the totem identified the clan, whose members were bound by speci­ fic ties of kinship, so that the 'collective totem is part of the civil status of each individual.' Indeed, a 'clan is essentially a group of individuals who bear the same name and rally around the same sign. Take away • the name and the sign which materializes it, and the clan is no longer representable. Since the group is pos­ sible only on this condition, both the institution of the emblem and the part it plays in the life of the group are thus explained' (1973:472) • Stating that "we are now in a position to understand all that is essential in the totemic beliefs," Durkheim observed: Since religious force is nothing other than the collect­ ive and anonymous forces of the clan, and since this can • be represented in the mind only in the form of the totem, the totemic emblem is like the visible body of the god. Therefore, it is from it that those kindly and dreadful actions seem to emanate, which the cult seeks to provoke or prevent; consequently, it is to it that the cult is addressed. This is the explanation of why it holds the • first place in the series of sacred things (EF:253). Finally, while it is not my present problem to review Durk­ heim's positivist alchemies, we should note that Durkheim posi­ ted here a whole series of inner transformations invisible • to the participants themselves. Like the present day structur­ alists who often claim his mantle (eg. Levi-Strauss), Durk­ • --165-­ heim presumed that: Social action follows ways that are too circuitous and • • selves in connection, and from that, we are able to catch a glimpse of the way in which they were led to represent them under forms that are really foreign to their nature and to transfigure them by thought (EF:239-40). • Having thus traced Durkheim's notion of the crystalliza­ tion and autonomization of symbolism, let us next turn our at­ • tention to the progressive extension of these increasingly auto­ nomous sets through symbolic equations. For it is only by ex­ tending such fundamental polarities that men are able to build up more complex classificatory systems which may then gradually • become detached from both their original sacral and collective basis. Only by striving to view this long sequence as a whole process with many phases and transformations can we ever hope to understand how our modern rational and universally valid obscure, and employs psychical mechanisms complex to allow the ordinary observer to comes. As long as scientific analysis does teach it to them, men know well that they but they do not know by whom. So they must selves the idea of these powers with which cognitive classificatory systems • • • • • came to emerge • that are too see when it not come to are acted upon, invent by them­ they feel them­ • • • • • • • • • • --166-­ 7. The Building of Classificatory Systems: Cosmization Through Symbolic Equations Preface. Since sociocultural process depends upon symbols (which grow increasingly autonomous), inevitably the organi­ zing tension between "sacral" and "profane" collective repre­ sentations becomes extended to all spheres of reality and le­ vels of experience. "All known religions have been systems of ideas which tend to embrace the universality of things, and to give us a complete representation of the world" (EF: 165). The so-called "contagiousness" of "sacral" symbolism leads to a universal classificatory system covering the II ... whole world in the fashion of a gnosis or cabbala" (PC:70). Rooted first in varying degrees of phenomenological or con­ crete resemblance to the "sacral" and "profane" oppositions which anchor all emerging systems of morality and knowledge, through compounding series of analogies these symbolic equa­ tions progressively link together diverse experiences, places, times, and levels of existence. As the prime vehicles for the extension and synthesis of knowledge, analogy and metaphor are crucial for the construction of these systems guiding conscience and consciousness, especially in the early stages. "In China, in all the Far East, and in modern India, as well as in ancient Greece and Rome, ideas about sympathetic actions, symbolic correspondences, and astrological influences not only were or are very widespread, but exhausted or stillexhaust col­ lective knowledge" (PC:5). Thus, the progressive extension and elaboration of resonating levels of phenomenologically based symbolic equations and proportions serves to progressively a­ lign all aspects of experience into more or less coherent structures of conscience and consciousness. liThe men of the clan and the things which are classified in it form by their union a solid system, all of whose parts are united and vibrate sympathetically" (EF:175). These constitutive systems of sym­ bolic equations and sequences act as bridges transforming em­ pirical diversity into moral and conceptual unity. IIThis organ­ • • • • • • • • • • • --167-­ ization, which at first may appear to us as purely logical, is at the same time moral" (EF:175). Thus simultaneously moral and cognitive, these rudimentary systems of classification come to serve as the central directive paradigms of their cultures. World, self, and society become progressively or­ ganized around these compounding series of symbolic equations, For example, of the highly ramified Chinese Taoist system of classification, and also of moral and intellectual direction, Durkheim and Mauss observed: "It governs all details of life among the most immense population that humanity has ever known" (PC:67). In sum, first through polarities which create tension in the symbolic field, and then through ramifying series of symbolic equations based on the primal tensions,thewholeworld becomes cosmicized; the small scale human world becomes valorized • In this regard, two essential principles have begun to emerge from our systematic in-depth reconstruct~on of the "nuclear structure" of Durkheim's substantive work so far. Let us first recall that Durkheim presumed that structures of con­ science and consciousness are socioculturally and historically constructed, and thus remain for a long time linked and even confounded with specific groups. Moreover, as we have seen al­ ready, and will explore further in the succeeding section on the primitive sacral complex as the womb of society and culture the systems of morality and knowledge which so often become dominant first emerge in their most systematic way out of ma­ gical ritual and religious myth. In short, the two inner con­ stitutive principles of the construction of over-arching sys­ tems of moral and intellectual classification are that these are, to a great extent, sociocentric and sacral-magical. As Durkheim and Mauss noted: "Among the Zuni, the idea which so­ ciety has of itself, and its worldview, are so interlaced and merged that their organiztion, has perfectly been described as 'mytho-sociologic , " (PC:42) . Now, the linkage of the form of symbolic systems to the structure of the group, and the linkage of their content to • • --168-­ • the sacral outlooks and magical protocols, are two principles of utmost importance for the human sciences. Both Weber and Durkheim, for instance, were very sensitive to this inner • linkage of the legitimate structures of conscience and con­ sciousness to the structure of the group and to its religion. Although first born in the clan and the totemic cult, if sys­ tems of morality and knowledge are to evolve, they must pro­ • gressively shed their primal connection with the restrictive structures of both group and religion. For, as we have propo­ sed, as societies evolve, so too~~heir prime symbolic guid­ ance systems. And as Benjamin Nelson (see especially 1973a) has proposed, following both Weber and Durkheim, we should expect that the extension of the social bond--that is, shifts in the structures of social fraternization--and universaliza­ • tion and rationalization of the legitimate structures of moral and intellectual authority proceed together on the world-his­ torical level. Indeed, as Nelson, Weber, and Durkheim empha­ • size, the failure to break with either sacral-magical praxis (ritual protocols, stereotyping, etc,) and classificatory sys­ • tems rooted primarily in the collectivity, constitute prime obstacles to mOdernization. Now since Primitive Classification preceeded The Elemen­ tary Forms, and since, as we have seen, Durkheim originally • intended to entitle the latter "The Elementary Forms of Thought and of Religious Life" (Alpert, 1939:55), let us first turn to recall the general problems and theses which Durkheim pro­ posed to address. Then we shall consider the more fully ela­ borated answers which Durkheim offered in 1912. a. Durkheim'~ Socio-Logic: The Links Between Symbols ~ Groups • As a prelude to the project which culminated in The Elementary Forms, Durkheim wrote On Some Primitive Forms of Classification with Mauss to reveal the inner sociocultural "prehistory" of the categories of moral rules and intellectual • concepts. As always, Durkheim's socio-logic--his insistence that symbols and logics be linked first to the group--had to • • --169-­ • contend with a powerful and pervasive counter logic. And, in our own time, as in Durkheim's, that psycho-philosophical ab­ straction of the modern Western world--the generic ego float­ • ing in space endowed with a self-guiding rationality shining by virtue of its own inviolable "inner light"--still reigns. But Durkheim argued: "We have no justification for supposing that our mind bears within it at bIrth, completely formed, • the prototype of this elementary framework of all classifica­ tion" (PC:8). Indeed, I believe that the general thrust of Durkheim's thought here was correct, for the modern notion of the generic ego as the repository of an innate moral sense and a calculus of rationality depended upon the negation of tradition and the delegitimation and stripping away of the authority of the collectivity. What is most misleading here, • of course, was the implicit symbolic equation between ration­ • ality, individualism, and freedom, the latter conceived lar­ gely in the negative sense as the absence of traditional so­ cial and cultural constraints. As Lukes (1968), among others, has observed, one of Durkheim's lasting accomplishments is to • have demonstrated that there is no necessary inner connection between logical nominalism and its modern secular equivalents, and individual freedom and political democracy. Indeed, clo­ ser attention to the bIrth pangs of the modern world would • have revealed, as both the Puritans in the English Civil War and Hobbes showed, that such positions may just as easily be linked with authoritarian and totalitarian regimes--with the Leviathans of the modern world. In sum, what Durkheim rightly insisted upon was that our modern notions here have themsel­ ves a distinct rhetorical structure. Against this highly dyna­ mic position, Durkheim and Mauss declared in the opening pages • of their essay: • The faculties of definition, deduction, and induction are generally considered as immediately given in the constitution of the individual understanding. Admitted­ ly, it has been known for a long time that, in the cour­ se of history, men learned to use these functions better and better. But it is thought that in their essential features they have been fully formed as long as mankind • I • • • • • • • • • • , has existed. It has not even been imagined that they might have been, by a painful combination of elements, borrowed from extremely different sources, quite for­ eign to logic and laboriously organized. And this con­ ception of the matter was not at all surprising so long as the development of logical faculties was thought to belong simply to individual psychology, so long as no one had the idea of seeing in these methods of scien­ tific thought veritable social institutions whose ori­ gin sociology alone can retrace and explain (PC:3). Yes, that is the key: scientific rationality, especially of the utilitarian or positivist varieties, even the rationali­ ty of the pre-social individual which are so often symboli­ cally associated, are themselves modern social institutions! And, as with so many other useful fictions of the Enlighten­ ment, such as the "noble savage," "Robinson Crusoe," or the self-equilibrating market mechanism of market capitalism, these are merely images which we mistakenly project back into history, and onto other societies and cultures. Now, Durkheim clearly saw that, instead of being primarily anchored as fix­ ed faculties inherent in the generic ego, modern universalis­ tic and rationalistic classificatory systems had undergone a long evolution which they could not adequately explain in terms of their own premises. Durkheim's insights here are crucial, for as societies evolve, so too do their prime sym­ bolic guidance systems, and if our modern system emerged from the past, there must be some way of specifying the in­ ner link between two systems so different. The key to this inner evolution, Durkheim posited, was a link or parallel between the extension of the social bond and the rationali­ zation and universalization of classificatory systems and, thus, of the structures of legitimate moral and intellectual authority. These were Durkheim's root "socio-Iogics," which so few seem to have understood then and even today. It is interesting to note that few readers of Primitive Classification have recognized that the very structure of the essay is evolutionary. The more or less static preoccupations of the two schools (American structuralism-functionalism and British social anthropology) which still lay claim to the le­ • • --171-­ • gitimating mantle of Durkheim's "charisma-on-deposit" work against this crucial recognition. This is especially true of the latter school whose penchant for small-scale ethnographic • analyses and anti-evolutionary biases have led them, although basically sympathetic, to mount what appears to be a devasta­ ting series of charges against the logical and evidential structure of Durkheim and Mauss's essay. For instance, Rodney • Needham, the English translator of Primitive Classification, has raised a whole series of seemingly fatal criticisms against this essay (but see Alpert, 1965:665). Needham charges that there is good reason to believe that "Durkheim and Mauss's • entire venture was misconceived" (1963:xxvi). Needham insists that " •.. there is no logical necessity to postulate a causal connection between society and symbolic classification" (1963: xxiv). "In no single case is there any compulsion to believe • that society is the cause or even the model of the classifica­ tion" (1963: xxv). "Now society is alleged to be the model on which classification is based, yet in society after society examined no formal correspondence can be shown to exist. Dif­ • ferent forms of classification are found with identical types of social organization, and similar forms with different types of society" (1963:xvi). Needham adds that the most serious methodological failing was that " .•• Durkheim and Mauss did not subject their thesis to test by concomitant variation" (1963:xvi). Finally, in terms of the logical sequence under­ lying Durkheim's argument, Needham makes the oft-repeated • charge that: • If the mind is taken to be a system of cognitive facul­ ties, it is absurd to say that the categories originate in social organization .... The social model must itself be perceived to possess the characteristics which make it useful in classifying other things, but this cannot be done without the very categories which Durkheim and Mauss derived from the model (1963:xxvii). Needham concludes with what must be one of the "weakest recom­ mendations for the theoretical and historical value of tran~ • lating and reading a classic essay ever given: "Whatever its faults, its prime theoretical contribution has been to isolate • • --172-­ classification as an aspect of culture to which sociological inquiry should be directed" (1963:x1). Damning with faint • praise! William Runciman (1969:190) felt the same way, brand­ ing Durkheim's sociology of religion as "fundamentally mis­ conceived," and summed up his disdain by referring to Durk­ heim's sociology of knowledge as resting ona "logical howler." • Now, although Steven Lukes follows many of Evans-Pritch­ ardIs and Needham's criticisms (eg. "in the first place, the very relations established must always presuppose the prior existence of these very abilities", 1973:447), nonetheless, • he offers a more subtly inflected critical review. Lukes even finds some aspects of Durkheim's thesis valuable. Although Lukes hardly more than Needham has clearly recognized the "nu­ clear structure" underlying Durkheim's work as we have eXIJ10r­ • ed it here, his judgements in this regard are generally more reliable. Although resolutely criticizing Durkheim's evolu­ tionary claims, Lukes, apparently influenced by the lone voice of Robin Horton (1967, 1973), does acknowledge that " ... the • hypothesis that primitive and traditional religions contain the germs of scientific thinking is, in many ways, both chal­ lenging and plausible" (1973:449). (We shall soon pursue this notion in the following section on the primitive sacral com­ • p1ex). And Lukes especially praises Durkheim's claims that: • •.• belief systems, including primitive religions, should be treated as cosmologies. This claim has proved immensely fruitfu1....Perhaps their most theo­ retically significant aspect derives from the impli­ cations of his (other) claim that there are struct­ ural correspondences between symbolic classification and social organization, and quite generally between different orders of social facts (1973:449). Now, doubtless as many critics have charged, if the • human mind were totally devoid of any inherent classificatory ability, as Durkheim's rather extreme statements in Primitive Classification so often seem to suggest, then~~ou1d simply lack the rudimentary ability to construct ordered societies • in the first place. Once again, Durkheim's "besetting schol­ arly vice" of petitio principii was at work. However, it should • • --173-­ not be overloo~ that Durkheim himself explicitly acknowled­ • • • • • • • • • ged this logical necessity in The Elementary Forms. ... it is not our intention to deny that the indivi­ dual intellect has of itself the power of perceiving resemblances between the different objects of which it is conscious. Quite on the contrary, it is clear that even the most primitive and simple classifications presuppose this faculty (EF:170). Doubtless, Durkheimts bald sociologism ("The first logical categories were social cat~gories; the first classes of things were classes of men", PC:82) was overstated. Once again, his rhetorical animus toward psychologism led him to excess: Far from classifying spontaneously and by a sort of natural necessity, humanity in the beginning lacks the most indispensable conditions for the classifica­ tory function. Further, it is enough to examine the very idea of classification to understand that men could not have found its essential elements in him­ self (PC:7). Consequently, I am not interested here in pursuing what appears to many (eg. Needham) as Durkheimts main proposition-­ namely, that social forms were the sole and primary source of logical categories. Rather, like Lukes and Benjamin Nelson (1973a), I am more interested in what we might term the "weak­ er" and less explored version of Durkheimts theses--namely, that cognitive and moral classifications have been throughout history inextricably bound up with the structure and culture of collectivities. Now, while certainly the English anthropo­ logists have done some o.f the finest work on symbolism and ritual using Durkheimts leads, I am convinced that the perspect­ ive which is emerging here has been generally slighted by them and most others. I believe that if we focus on the evolution­ ary structure of Durkheimts thought, and constantly relate it to Weberts sometimes parallel and sometimes complementary work, we shall help pioneer a new and crucial foundation for the emerging human sciences. Now, it was this "socio-logic" which linked symbols to groups rather than to individual minds (see especially Evans­ Pritchard, 1965), which led Durkheim and Mauss to explore these relationships, while it was his rhetorical stance and • • --174-­ dialectical ambitions which led the former to excess. In the beginning of Primitive Classification, Durkheim and Mauss • posed their problem in this manner. • A class is a group of things; and things do not present themselves to observation grouped in such a way. We may well perceive more or less vaguely their resemblances. But the single fact of these resemblances is not enough to explain how we are led to group things which thus re­ • semble one another; to bring them together in a sort of ideal sphere enclosed by definite limits, which we call a class, a species, etc .... To classify is not only to form groups; it means arranging these groups according to particular relations. We imagine them as coordinated or subordinate one to the other, we say that some (the species) are included in others (the genera), that the former are subsumed under the latter .... Every classifi­ cation inplies a hierarchical order for which neither the tangible world nor our mind gives us the model. We there­ fore have reason to ask where it was found (PC:7-8). • To buttress their case which, as we shall see, so often rests upon an ingenious use of analogy between social forms and logical forms, Durkheim and Mauss note the curious lineage of the very terms of classifications themselves: • The very terms which we use in order to characterize it allow us to presume that all these logical notions have an extra-logical origin. We say that species of the same genera are connected by relations of kinship; we call certain classes "families;" did not the very word genus • (genre) itself originally describe a group of relatives (PC:8)? Thus, Durkheim and Mauss proposed their socio-logical program of inquiry into the elementary forms of classification. Far from being able to say that men classify quite nat­ • urally, by a sort of necessity of their individual under­ standing, we must on the contrary ask ourselves what could have led them to arrange their ideas in this way, and where they could have found the plan of this remarkable disposition. We cannot even dream of tackling this ques­ tion in all of its ramifications (PC:9). • But after a decades more work, Durkheim felt ready to address these problems which he first broached with Mauss in 1903. Now, as I have had occasion to remark before, because many secondary observers have failed to understand both nurk­ • heim's linkage of conscience and consciousness and his evolu­ tionary framework, many have also failed to understand why • • • • • • • • • • • "'-175-­ he returned again and again primarily (some would say almost exclusively) to consideration of such problems in terms of their paradigmatic lIelementary forms. 1I But if, indeed, Durk­ heim was inspired in proposing that our modern forms of clas­ sification have a prehistory, then how else are we to empiri­ cally illuminate this hidden shroud if not by recourse to what appear as the elementary forms? Thus, in the first substantive chapter of Primitive Classification, Durkheim and Mauss focus­ sed on Australian totemism, to which the former devoted his full attention, of course, in The Elementary Forms. In this light, Primitive Classification can be seen as a wider evolu­ tionary prolegomena to one of the two main threads of Durkheim's story which was later to unfold in his masterpiece of 1912. Therefore, the thrust of Needham's and many others' criticisms of Durkheim's logical base is attenuated by our shift from concern with the generic categories to the evolution of systems of classification, and the criticisms of the evidential base are lessened by the detailed and systematic presentation found in the classic of 1912. Before we turn to consider how Durkheim charted in 1912 the manner in which classificatory systems are built up through a progressive extension of a series of resonating symbolic equations, let us briefly review Durkheim's setting of this specific problem in 1903. Doubtless his 1903 preliminary ef­ fort was less adequate than his later full blown analysis, for in the former we see that Durkheim and Mauss posited, ala Levy-Bruhl's law of II mys tical participation II (see also Lukes, 1973:438, #17), a primitive state of undifferentiated confusion of categories. Now, in seeking to investigate the prehistory of modern universally valid, internally consistent, and ra­ tional II scientific ll classifications, Durkheim was right in generally contrasting the fluidness of the former to the fix­ ity of the latter. Indeed, however much religious thought and hermetic alchemical traditions may have contributed to the development of western thought, s~ience as we know it today is simply not possible until the various orders of being are view­ • • • • • • • • • • • --176-­ ed as closed to one another, until phenomenal spheres are re­ garded as stable, and until there is the widespread feeling of certitude that invariant laws describing these closed and stable relationships can be discovered because there is a "sufficient reason" for this particular world-order. Durkheim noted this important difference between modern and primitive thought patterns: For us to classify things is to arrange them in groups which are distinct each from the other, and are separa­ ted by clearly determined lines of demarcation .... At the bottom of our conception of class there is the idea of a circumscription with fixed and definite outlines. Now one could almost say that this conception of classi­ fication does not go back before Aristotle. Aristotle was the first to proclaim the existence and the reality of specific differences, to show that the means was cause, and that there was no direct passage from one genus to another (PC:4-5). Now, Durkheim's achievement in deriving the Aristotelian cate­ gories from social and cultural process (what has been called his "social Kantianism") was to attempt to illuminate both the generic and especially the genetic-evolutionary processes by which primitive symbolic systems gradually became transform­ ed into modern scientific classifications. In so doing, he be­ gan with the original totemic situation in which transforma­ tions from one classificatory set to another apparently pro­ ceeded at random and without a fixed logic. If we descend to the least evolved societies known ... we shall find a ... general mental confusion. Here, the individual loses his personality. There is a complete lack of distinction between him and his exterior soul or his totem. He and his "fellow animal" together compose a single personality. The identification is such that the man assumes the characteristics of the thing or ani­ mal with which he is thus united .... There is a complete indifferentiation between sign and thing, name and per­ son, places and inhabitants .... For the primitive the principle generatio aequivoca is proved.... Animals, people, and inanimate objects were originally almost al­ ways conceived of as standing in relations of the most perfect identity to each other (PC:6-7). Durkheim and Mauss even went so far as to liken this to the development of the individual (PC:7), as in the principle of "ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny." Finally, Durkheim and • • --177-- Mauss noted the survival of this primitive mode of thinking • even today, beneath many of our sophisticated forms. Obser­ • ving that "It would be impossible to exaggerate the state of indistinction from which the human mind developed," Durkheim and Mauss noted: Even today a considerable part of our popular litera­ ture, our myths and our religion is based on a funda­ • mental confusion of all images and ideas. They are not separated from each other, as it were, with any clar­ ity. Metamorphoses, the transmission of qualities, the substitution of persons, souls and bodies, beliefs about the materialization of spirits and the spiritualization of material objects, are the elements of religious thought or of folklore. Now the very idea of such trans­ mutations could not arise if things were represented by delimited and classified concepts (PC:5). Now, granting that the postulate of a primitive state • of indistinction and confusion to which rationality, as a coun­ ter principle, gradually gave order is an inadequate formula­ tion of the problem, let us turn our attention to The Elemen­ tary Forms in which Durkheim greatly elaborated his earlier • analysis of Australian totemism. We shall return at the end of this section to Durkheim's summary statements of his ear­ lier theses in the conclusion to Primitive Classification. But, first, since Durkheim thought that the "contagiousness" • of .. sacral" symbolism 0 ffered the key to understanding the origin of both classificatory systems as such, and the nature of mythological transformations from one set of phenomena to • another, let us first turn to further analyze this essential process. Now, even though Durkheim's later statement was far • better than his first tentative version, he still put far too much emphasis on "contagion", while leaving its inner symbol­ ic mechanisms too little explored. Since the extension of sym­ bolic equations holds the key to the construction of systems of morality and cognitive classification, let UE precede these other analyses with a quick look at some perspectives which • try to illuminate the basic equational and transformational structures of symbolic process. • • • • • • • • • • • --178-­ b. Analogy and Metaphor: The Structure of Symbolic Equations It is crucial for those wishing to build the founda­ tions of the human sciences to recognize the critical im­ portance of analogy and metaphor as constitutive processes in building the human cosmos called culture. For the use of analogy and metaphor are prime strategies for the extension of experience and the synthesis of knowledge. As such, they allow us to link together separate things and events into a meaningful relationship. Recognition of phenomenological similarity or difference, and the construction of inner or essential comparison~ and contrasts, is the basic way of con­ stituting relationships. Besides controlled experiment, one of the few tried and tested ways of extending knowledge from the known to the unknown is through analogy and metaphor. Indeed, the human cosmos called culture depends on these pro­ cesses of symbolic equations as one of its key inner consti­ tutive processes. All cultural expressions thus take on meaning through such equational structures. Language, for example, is built up by extending a series of root metaphors from one situation to another, by translating and retranslating basic guiding images into their various manifestations. The more seminal the root image, the more paradigmatic or laden with potential meaning will the word root become. In this spinning out pro­ cess, a whole web of related meanings is gradually construct­ ed, and the whole language can be seen to "hang together" on a surprisingly small number of key pegs. Indeed, images come before words; an extended search through a good dictionary should convince almost anyone of the centrality of these root images, and the equational structure in which whole rafts of words and phras~are interdefined. Literary meaning, too, is built up out of a compounding series of symbolic equations. Indeed, the heart of the task of the literary critic is pre­ cisely to unfold and systematically elucidate these basic as­ sociational clusters, as Kenneth Burke calls them, or "what goes with what." • • --179-­ All other forms of knowledge and expression also have their own special equational structures and sequences. Noting • this universality of analogy and metaphor as symbolic linking devices, Northrop Frye has remarked upon the " ... similarity of form between the units of literature and of mathematics, the metaphor and the equation,1l which led him to wonder if: • ..• it is true that the verbal structures of psychology, anthropology, theology, history, law, and everything else built out of words have been informed or construct­ ed by the same kind of myths and metaphors that we find, in their original hypothetical form, in literature (1957: • 352)? • Now, there are good reasons for this to be so. For all knowing, indeed, all mental processes, ultimately rest upon perception, imagination, and cognition. The first supplies im­ • ages, the second projects images, while the third compares and contrasts these images and reconstructs them into a meaningful interpretive schema. Thus, for example, the perceptual and cog­ nitive training of young children centers largely around the in­ • creasingly systematic comparison (discernment of similarity, likeness) and contrast (difference) between these images, and their classification into sets, and abstraction of their shared qualities into generalizable attributes. Thus, the two key ele­ ments of symbolic process--polarities which create tension, and symbolic equations which link diverse events into series of meaningfully associated clusters, can be easily seen in • terms of the verbal games which adults often play with child­ ren for intellectual entertainment. For example, given a ser­ ies of rudimentary polarities such as hot/cold, black/white, up/down, left/right, etc., it is a simple matter for most • school age children, once they grasp the underlying logic, to begin to generate their own series of oppositions. Indeed, knowledge always begins with such first order experiential gestalts. A further stage is reached when these perceptual di­ • chotomies are given an analogical structure, such as hot is to summer as cold is to winter, and so on. Indeed, when this cap­ ability of constructing their own equational structures is ac­ • • • --180-­ quired, the comparing and contrasting reaches a new level of sophistication, and the child grows into higher order proces­ ses. The continued importance of these operations is attested • to by the use of the Miller's Analogies Test for entrance in­ to graduate school. Now, we should not be surprised to discover that almost all higher level cognitive and judgemental process, including • science itself, also rest upon equational structures which con­ tain an irreducible phenomenological or first order base. Al­ though the positivists' program for the philosophy of science banished all symbolic overtones from scientific language, and insisted that science consists exclusively of the systematic linkage of evidentially validated propositions, nevertheless, • other contemporary philosophers of science have revealed the continuing importance of images, analogies, models, and para­ digms in the growth of science. For instance, Norman R. Camp­ bell, one of the pioneers of this recognition, maintained that • the truly valuable element in scientific theories derives from a more or less fruitful embedded analogy which enables us to • imaginatively extend our understanding of laws from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Indeed, Campbell argued that this is the very structure of hypotheses and theories, and their prime val­ • ue, as contrasted with the inertness of law-like statements. Focussing on the process of discovery, Campbell, against the positivists, contended that the embedded analogy" ••• is essen­ tial to and inseparable from the theory and is not merely an aid to its formulation" (1920:119: see also 129-30). Signifi­ cantly, Northrop Frye, from a rather different perspective, makes a similar observation " ••• whatever is constructive in • any verbal structure seems to me invariably some kind of meta­ phor" (1957:353). Decades later, Mary Hesse (eg. Models and Ana­ • logies in Science, 1963) continued the same argument against the positivist~' denuding of the structure of scientific theory. Further, it is int~resting to note that other contemporary philosophers of science contend that scientific discovery and revolutions in science come about through "gestalt switches" • • • --181-­ and paradigm changes (eg. N.R. Hanson, 1958, T.S. Kuhn, 1962). Kuhn's notion of a paradigm as a model, an exemplar to be emu­ lated by the scientific communit~ is almost Durkheimian. In­ • deed, a sociologist might be indulged the speculation that had philosophers of science been more familiar with fundamental sociocultural theory, they would have reached these conclu­ sions in far clearer fashion long ago. In short, I submit that • science too, instead of moving exclusively in analytical fash­ ion from proposition to proposition, also grows and changes by moving from image to image. This is the irreducible phenomeno­ logical and metaphorical structure of all cultural processes. • Researchers in the human sciences too would do well to attempt to search out the fundamental equational and transform­ ational structures underlying their specific materials. For in­ stance, the philosopher Stephen Pepper (1942) has convincingly • analyzed several "root metaphors ll of world-scope. For example, the informing IIbilliard ball ll analogy which N.C. Campbell dis­ covered underlying the Gay-Lussac law of gases in chemistry is a specific illustration of the workings of atomistic and mech­ • anistic metaphors which have been so closely identified with the very structure of modern science. It is important to recog­ nize, therefore, that these II roo t metaphors" of atomism and mechanism constitute interpretive logics which tend to cut a­ cross modern physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, econo­ mics, political theory, sociology, jurisprudence, ethics, rel­ gion; in short, almost all modern disciplines in the Anglo • Cultural Tradition. Indeed, analysis of such cross-cutting interpretive logics of cultural traditions means that the historical thrust in the human sciences would be to proceed both analogically and homologically. Analogical • analysis means looking at the in-depth symbolic linkages be­ tween one sphere and another (eg. religious 'ethics and econo­ mic norms). The task here would be to unravel the series of inner symbolic equations generating horizontally congruent • spheres of action and meaning through the progressive extension of prime analogues from one set of experiences to another. • • • --182-­ Homological analysis means looking at the historical connect­ ions between analogous elements in different spheres of devel­ opment. Here the main task becomes to unravel the key sets of transformational equations linking diverse cultural phenomena with their common historical origins. • c. Levi-Strauss's Notion of Totemism as a Primitive Equational Structure • If we take this perspective and return to Durkheim's study of the primitive kind of systems in which phenomenologi­ cal analogy serves as the chief classificatory principle, it • is striking to note that one who calls himself "an inconstant disciple" of Durkheim should have developed a theory of totem­ ism precisely around such notions of deeply embedded equation­ al structures. Indeed, the "structuralist" progra'll centers on • elucidating the basic equational and transformational opera­ tions which constitute cultural process. Levi-Strauss views totemism as" a classificatory scheme which allows the na­ tural and social universe to be grasped as an organized whole" • (1966:135). It is precisely these equational and transforma­ tional structures (which Levi-Strauss further explores in the several volumes of his Mythologiques), which mark totemism as a primitive, melded, phenomenologically based system of meta­ hors and condensation symbolism in which different spheres and levels of experience are pulled together and seen as con­ vertible one into the other. • The mythical system and the modes of representations it employs serve to establish homologies [analogies?] be­ tween natural and social conditions, or more accurately, it makes it possible to equate significant contrasts found on different planes: the geographical, meterolo­ gical, zoological, botanical, technical, economic, social, • ritual, religious, and philosophical (1966:93). Arguing that " .• the totemic representation amounts to a code which makes it possible to pass from one system to another re­ gardless of whether it is formulated in natural or cultural • terms," Levi-Strauss also notes that this totemic classifica­ tion is more than just a system of knowledge, for "It is also • • --183-­ the basis of an ethic which prescribes or prohibits modes of behavior" (1965: 97) . • The isomorphism between social status and relations and symbolic cultural categories acts as the core, the framework, or template--the metaphorical translating column--of public and private phenomenological process. Arguing that the func­ • tion of totemism as a phenomenological code " ... is to guar­ antee the convertibility of ideas between different levels of social reality,1I Levi-Strauss suggests that this is what Durk­ heim meant to get at: "As Durkheim seems sometimes to have • realized, the basis of sociology is what may be called 'socio­ logic' (1966:76) .II • ... ideas and beliefs of the totemic type particularly merit attention because they constitute codes making it possible to ensure, in the form of conceptual systems, the convertibility of messages appertaining to each le­ vel ..•. This mediation between nature and culture is one of the distinctive functions of the totemic operator (1966: 90-1) . • •.. totemism postulates a logical equivalency between a society of natural species and a world of social groups • (1966: 104) . Thus, instead of adopting a Utilitarian or pragmatic approach to food interdictions, for instance, Levi-Strauss views them as a symbolic way to emphasize a crucial link or opposition • between culture and nature: "Eating prohibitions and obliga­ tions thus seem to be theoretically equivalent means of deno­ ting significance in a logical system some or all of whose ele­ ments are edible species" (1966:103). • Now, while utilizing such fundamental generative opposi­ tions as culture/nature, general/particular, generic logic/ change and history, Levi-Strauss, searching for the panhuman logic operating in the elementary structures of the human mind, feels as if he can explain all the diversity in symbolism and human action through abstract models of differentiation and integration. In so far as he overstates his case, his work • can be viewed as a kind of applied metaphysics. Yet, still his problem is akin to Durkheim's original one: how does dif­ ferentiation generate integration? Perhaps LaCapra (1972) is • • --184-­ more sensitive than most secondary observers to the signifi­ cance of Levi-Strauss's development of Durkheim's seminal in­ • sights. Let us conclude with a fine summary statement of • Levi-Strauss's insights into totemism as a symbolic coding system: What is significant is not so much the presence or ab­ sence of this or that level of classification as the ex­ istence of a classification with, as it were, an adjust­ able thread which gives the group adopting it the means of "focussing" on all planes, from the most abstract to the most concrete, the most cultural to the most natural, without changing its intellectual instrument (1966:136). • Thus totemism can be viewed as an ingenious primitive way of converting phenomenological diversity into moral and concep­ tual unity, of transforming "chaos" into "cosmos." Indeed, this "science of the concrete" is adequate for its context, • and as Durkheim observed, served as the foundation for the emergence of later rational and universal classificatory sys­ tems. • d. Sacral "Contagion" as A Primitive Metaphorical Link Now, if Durkheim viewed the "contagion" of sacral forces as the prime unifying link in primitive classificatory systems, this was because this process contained a number of crucial • metaphorical principles, especially "the part is equal to the whole," and "like produces like." Late in The Elementary Forms, for instance, Durkheim summed up these metaphorical principles in this way: • Since all the forces of the universe have been conceived • on the model of the sacred forces, the contagiousness in­ herent in the second was extended to the first, and men have believed that all the properties of a body could be transmitted contagiously. Likewise, when the principle according to which like produces like had been establish­ ed in order to satisfy certain religious needs, it detach­ • ed itself from its ritual origins to become, through a sort of spontaneous generalization, a law of nature (EF:404). Indeed, to Durkheim the contagion of sacral symbolism served as a way of translating through synecdoche and metaphor these constitutive principles into simpler form. Let us briefly ex­ plore these primitive analogical classificatory operations. • ! I • • • • • • • • • • --185-­ Once again, religion serves as the prime symbolic ve­ hicle by which the sociocultural microcosm is first construct­ ed. Due to the contagiousness of sacred energies, mounting oppositions between it and all that is profane spread to things that appear to resemble the totemic incarnation in some way or another. It is these binary oppositions which serve as the first principle of classification. When a classification is reduced to two classes, these are almost necessarily conceived as antitheses; they are used primarily as a means of clearly separating things between which there is a very marked contrast (EF: I 70) • As Levi-Strauss notes, such binary oppositions serve as the organizing womb of culture. Thus, the very basis of the sym­ bolic alignments of the microcosm with the macrocosm is the series of radical antitheses between the sacred and the pro­ fane. Now, the symbolic contagion of sacral energies is the linking force to the extension of these binary oppositions. A sacred character is to a high degree contagious: it therefore spreads out from the totemic being to every­ thing that is closely or remotely connected with it. The religious sentiments inspired by the animal are communicated to the substances upon which it is nour­ ished and which serves to make or remake its flesh and blood, to the things that resemble it, and to the dif­ ferent beings with which it has constant relations. Thus, little by little, sub-totems are attached to the totems, and form the cosmological systems expressed by the primitive classifications. At last, the whole world is divided up among the totemic principles of each tribe (EF: 254) • Now, one of the marks of primitive thought in this re­ gard is its phenomenological or concrete imagistic bases, for the ways in which experiences may be judged relevant to one or another set of symbolic references depend more upon the concrete details of specific situations, prevailing group de­ finitions, and the individuals involved, than upon any univer­ sal or rational criterion. The point of departure here is the "natural attitude," which is shared by primitive and modern man in his everyday mode alike. Experience is linked to exper­ • • • • • • • • • • • --186-­ ience, image to image, instead of to abstract governing prin­ ciples. The key anchor of this progressive cosmization is thus analogy. Based upon degrees of resemblance to the totem­ ic incarnation, analogies drawn in a concrete way from imme­ diate experience are progressively extended to other more or less related sets of experiences. Things similar to the sa­ cred image are believed to be driven by the same essential energizing principles. The Australian does not place things in the same clan or in different clans at random. For him as for us, similar images attract one another, while opposed ones repel one another, and it is on the basis of these feel­ ings of affinity or of repulsion that he classified the corresponding things in one place or another (EF:170). Later in The Elementary Forms, Durkheim spoke of the "law of contagion" as containing two sub-principles of so­ called "sympathetic magic." The first principle was that "the part is equal to the whole," which means that "Anything touch­ ing an object also touches everything which has any relations of proximity or unity whatsoever with this object. Whatever affects the part also affects the whole" (EF:39B) . ... when a sacred thing is subdivided, each of its parts remains equal to the thing itself. Insofar as religious thought is concerned, the part is equal to the whole; it has the same powers, the same efficacy. The debris of a relic has the same virtue as a relic in good condition. The smallest drop of blood contains the same active principle as the whole thing .... This conception would be inexplicable if the sacredness of something were due to the constituent properties of the thing itself, for, in that case, it should vary with that thing, increasing and decreasing with it. But if the virtues it is believed to possess are not intrin­ sic to it, and if they come from certain sentiments which it brings to mind and symbolizes, though these originate outside it, then, since it has no need of determined dimensions to play this role of reminder, it will have the same value whether it is entire or not. Since the part makes us think of the whole, it evokes the same sentiment as the whole (EF:26l-2). The second principle is that like attracts like. The representation of a being or condition reproduces this being or condition. Durkheim compared these two principles in terms of the differences between sympathetic magic and the effica­ • • • • • • • • • • • • --187-­ ciousness of the totemic commensal rites. For instance, Durk­ heim spoke first of the mechanisms at work in a magic charm: The charm is, to a large extent, a simple phenomenon of transfer. The idea of the image is associated in the mind with that of the model; consequently, the effects of an action performed upon a statue are transmitted contagiously to the person whose traits it reproduces. The function of the image is for its original what that of a part is for the whole: it is an agent of transmis­ sion. Therefore, men think that they can obtain the same result by burning the hair of the person whom they wish to injure: the only difference between these two sorts of operations is that in one, the communication is made through similarity, while in the other is by means of contiguity. It is different with the rites which concern us. They suppose not only the displacement of a given condition or quality, which passed from one object into the other, but also the creation of something entirely new. The mere act of representing the animal gives birth to this animal and creates it~ by imitating the sound of wind or falling water, they cause clouds to form, rain to fall, etc. Of course, resemblance plays an important part in each case, but not all the same one. In a charm, it only gives a special direction to the action exerci­ sed; it directs in a certain wayan action not origina­ ting in it. In the rites of which we have just been de­ scribing, it acts by itself and is directly efficacious. So, in contradiction to the usual definitions, the real difference between the two principles of so-called sym­ pathetic magic and the corresponding practices is not that contiguity acts in one case and resemblance in the other, but that in the former there is simple contagious communication, while there is production and creation in the latter (EF:39S-9). And Durkheim added this footnote: "We say nothing of what has been called the law of opposition, for as Hubert and Mauss (in their "General Theory of Magic") have shown, a contrary produces its opposite only through the intermediary of a sim­ ilar" (EF:399). Thus, like attracts or produces like; analogy is the mediating principle, the crucial third term between empirical diversity and the all-embracing moral unity of the cosmos. What ultimately results from these cross-mixings is oft­ en a very complex classificatory system, what Levi-Strauss has called a "bricolage," based upon the phenomenological • • • • • • • • • • • --188-­ "science of the concrete." In short, there is a special logic to the elementary forms of human classification, whether these be elaborated by primitive peoples or moderns. The primitive classificatory process, though seemingly idiosyncratic, really does not proceed at random. Nor is it alogical or pre-logical; it is phenomeno-logical. What must be respected here especially is the extraordinary difficulty of building up systems of moral and intellectual classification from scratch. Given their meager cultural resources, the wonder is that primitive societies should have ever been able to construct classifica­ tory systems of such sophistication and general usefulness. Whatever their inadequacies, and these are manifold, one of their undeniable virtues is, as Durkheim emphasized, that they laid the first foundations of our modern epochal achievements in science. We have seen the facility with which the primitive con­ fuses kingdoms and identifies the most heterogeneous things, men, animals, plants, stars, etc. Now we see one of the causes which has contributed the most to facilitating these confusions. Since religious forces are eminently contagious, it is constantly happening that the same principle animates very different objects equally; it passes from some into others as the result of either a simple material proximity or even of a su­ perficial similarity. It is thus that men, animals, plants, and rocks come to have the same totem: the men because they bear the name of an animal; the animals because they bring the totemic emblem to mind; the plants because they nourish these animals; the rocks because they mark the place where the ceremonies are celebrated. Now, religious forces are therefore consi­ dered the source of all efficacy; so beings having one single religious principle ought to pass as having the same essence, and as differing from one another only in secondary characteristics. This is why it seemed quite natural to arrange them in a single category, and to re­ gard them as mere varieties of the same class, transmu­ table into one another. When this relation has been established, it makes the phenomena of contagion appear under a new aspect. Taken by themselves, they seem quite foreign to the logical life. Is their effect not to mix and confuse beings in spite of their natural differences? But we have seen that these confusions and participation have played a role of the highest utility in logic; they have served • --189-­ • to bind together things which sensation leaves apart from one another. So it is far from true that con­ tagion, the source of these connections and confusions, is marked with that fundamental irrationality that one is inclined to attribute to it at first. It has opened the way for the scientific explanations of the future (EF: 364-5) • • Indeed, Durkheim went so far as to identify the origin of the so-called "law of causality" (force and sequence) with these primitive notions. (We shall later pursue the significance of Durkheim's general assertions here in the following section • on the primitive sacral complex as the womb of society and culture). It is important to repeat that even though to modern "rationalized" observers these primitive systems of resona­ ting symbolic equations might seem wholly unreasonable and in­ • deed devoid of everything we think of as logic, a veritable superstitious "bricolage," nonetheless, part of Durkheim's lasting achievement here was to emphasize the inner logic of their construction and their evolutionary significance. Ele­ • mentary classificatory systems are cal projections constructed through sion of knowledge through analogy. a series of phenomenologi­ the principle of exten­ To a certain extent, these systems are "mytho-sociological," as Durkheim said, since col­ • lective representations have sacralized the entire field of human experience. • • • • • --190-­ e. Symbolic Equations and The Legitimate Foundations of • Moral and Intellectual Authority of Collectivities The construction of systems of moral and intellectual classification through the progressive extension of symbolic equations originally rooted in the sacral/profane opposition • of collectivties is well illustrated by Durkheim and Mauss's <~f seminal monograph on Primitive Classification. For example, of the phenomenological extension of concrete analogy among the American Zuni Indians, Durkheim and Mauss noted: • What we find among the Zuni is a veritable arrangement • of the universe. All beings and facts in nature, 'the sun, moon, and stars, the sky, earth, and sea, in all their phenomena and elements; and all inanimate objects, as well as plants, animals, and men,' are classed, la­ belled and assigned to fixed places in a unique and in­ tegrated system in which all the parts are coordinated and subordinated one to another by 'degrees of resem­ blance' (PC: 4 3) • Through progressive extension of analogies, these compounding • systems of classification are interwoven more and more tight­ ly; cross-indexed as~librarian might say. Indeed, the degree of complexity, "cross-indexing," and internal consistency might serve as some basic criteria for judging the comparative • degree of cultural complexity as represented in the central classificatory system. • In the form in which we now find it, the principle of this system is a division of space into seven regions: north, south, west, east, zenith, nadir, and the center. Everything is assigned to one or another of these seven regions. To mention only the seasons and the elements, • the wind, breeze, or air, and the winter season are at­ tributed to the north; water, the spring, and its damp breezes to the west; fire and the summer, to the south; the earth, seeds, the frosts which bring the seeds to maturity and end the year, to the east. The pelican, crane, grouse, sagecock, the evergreenoak, etc. are things of the west. With the east are classed the deer, antelope, turkey, etc. (PC:43-4). Now, these more or less systematic phenomenological • linkages continue to ramify: flora and fauna are linked with specific regions of the sky and seasons of the year, colors are added, as are human virtues and social classes. Indeed, • • --191-­ • • • • • • • • • redundancy serves an important function, as in all systems of communication, for it almost seems as if primitive cult­ ures constantly rotated the symbolic matrix, each time tying in yet another thread in the emerging cosmological fabric. This rotation and redundancy increases "inter-convertibility," as Levi-Strauss observes. A particular coloris attributed to each region and char­ acterizes it, The north is yellow, because, it is said, the light is yellow when the sun rises and sets; the west is blue because of the blue light seen at sunset. The south is red because it is the region of summer and fire, which is red. The east is white because it is the color of the day. The upper regions are streaked with colors like the play of light among the clouds; the low­ er regions are black like the depths of the earth. As for the center, the navel of the world, representative of all regions, it is all the colors simultaneously (PC: 44) . In addition, men and things form integral parts of the same cosmological system. The emerging symbolic economy thus includes not only the creation of value but also the alloca­ tion of symbolic value to all the resources of the world. Na­ tural elements are assigned social functions. Not only things, but social functions are distributed in this way. The north is the region of force and de­ struction, thus war and destruction belong to it; to the west, peace and hunting; to the south, the region of heat, agriculture, and medicine; to the east, the region of the sun, magic, and religion; to the upper world and the lower world are assigned diverse combin­ ations of these functions (PC:44). Noting that " ... this division of the world is exactly the same as that of the clans within the pueblo" (PC:44), Durkheim and Mauss argued: not only do the divisions of things by regions and the division of society by clans correspond, but they are inextricably interwoven and merged. One may equal­ ly well say that things are classified either with the north, south, etc. or with the clans of the north, south, etc. (PC:47). Contending that we may discover the evolutionary links between the type of classification by clans, seen in Australian totem­ ism, and more complicated systems of classification by quar­ ters, as seen for example in some of the American tribe~ • • --192-­ • • • • • • • • • Durkheim and Mauss claimed: Things were first of all localized by clans and totems. But this strict localization of clans ... necessarily brought with it a corresponding localization of the things attributed to the clans. From the moment that the wolf people, for example, belong to a particular quarter of the camp, the same necessarily applies to to the things of all sorts which are classified under this same totem. Consequently, the camp has only to be oriented in a fixed way and all its parts are immedia­ tely oriented together with everything, things and peo­ ple, that they comprise. In other words, all things in nature are henceforth thought of as standing in fixed relationships to equally fixed regions in space (PC:65). Durkheim and Mauss further observe that this represents that stage of cosmological classificatory system which por­ trays the " ..• tribe as a microcosm of the universe," an imago mundi. Certainly, it is only tribal space which is divided and shared in this way. But just as for the primitive the tribe constitutes all humanity, and as the founding ancestor of the tribe is the father and creator of men, so also the idea of the camp is identified with that of the whole world. The camp is the center of the universe, and the whole universe is concentrated within it. Cosmic space and tribal space are thus only very imperfectly distinguished, and the mind passes from one to the other without difficulty, almost without being aware of doing so. And in this way things are connected with particular quarters (PC:65). Now, this notion of the camp as the center of the world is a particularly good illustration of what Durkheim and Mauss cal­ led the "sociocentrism" of primitive and archaic classifica­ tory systems or cosmologies. It has quite often been said that man began to conceive things by relating them to himself. The above allows us to see more precisely what this anthropocentrism, which might better be called sociocentrism, consists of. The center of the first schemas of nature is not the indivi­ dual; it is society. It is this that is objectified, not man. Nothing shows this more clearly than the way in which the Sioux retain the whole universe, in a way, within the limits of tribal space; and we have seen how universal space itself is nothing else than the site oc­ cupied by the tribe, only indefinitely extended beyond its real limits. It is by virtue of the same mental dis­ position that so many peoples have placed the center of the world, "the navel of the earth," in their own poli­ tical or religious capital, ie. at the place which is • L • --193-­ • the center of their moral life (PC:86-7). Now, these insistent symbolic linakges imply consubstan­ tiality--that the same sacred principle inheres in all linked • things. They are made of the same "cosmic" substance, and en­ ergized by the same basic principle. The problem becomes to orchestrate a ha~monious alignment between the two parallel orders. We witness here amost important equational process-­ • the moralization of nature, and the naturalization of man. In this crucial reciprocal interpenetration, as Levi-Strauss ob­ serves, world, self, and society grow together in a "solid system all of whose parts are united and vibrate sympatheti­ cally. " • Men regard the things in their clan as their relatives or associates; they call them their friends and think that they are made out of the same flesh as themselves. Therefore, between the two are elective affinities and • quite special relations of agreement. Things and people have a common name, and in a certain way they naturally understand each other and harmonize with one another .... Just as a man who belongs to the Crow clan has within him something of this animal, so the rain, since it is of the same clan and belongs to the same totem, is also necessarily considered as being 'the same thing as a crow'; for the same reason, the moon is a black cockatoo, every blacknut tree a pelican, etc. All the beings arran­ ged in a single clan, whether men, animals, plants or in­ animate objects are merely forms of the totemic being ..•. • All are really of the same flesh in the sense that all • partake of the nature of the totemic animal (EF:174-5). These consubstantial linkages continue to ramify as the societies grow more complex, until, as Durkheim and Mauss said of the Chinese Taoist system, " ••• the whole world is covered like a gnosis or a cabbala." Indeed, Durkheim and Mauss imply here that one of the hidden keys to understanding the growth of cultural complexity comes from the suppleness or differen­ • tial ease to which the central classificatory matrices of cul­ tures can be progressively applied to encompass the incredi­ ble diversity of empirical facts. This differential ability to generalize, to progressively extend, in short, to univer­ • salize prime symbolic oppositions, shall prove a critical fac­ tor in later sociocultural evolution. Of the complex Taoist • I • • • • • • • • • • --194-­ classificatory system, for instance, Durkheim and Mauss noted: In order to adapt the basic principles of the system to the facts, the divisions and subdivisions of regions and things were ceaselessly multiplied and complicated. The fact is that this classification was intended above all to regulate the conduct of men; and it was able to do so, avoiding the contradictions of experience, thanks to this very complexity (PC:70-1). Now, it is important to emphasize that such classifica­ tory systems serve not merely cognitive but moral functions as well. This dual aspect of phenomenological process means that such " ... classifications (are) intended above all to regulate the conduct of men," or as Levi-Strauss says, "these classifications also carry ethics." We have emphasized through­ out this book that structures of conscience and consciousness are always intimately interwoven, but had we drawn the conclu­ sion that the more elementary these systems become, the more the representations also function as reglementations? Thus, as Weber (1963,1968) also saw, primitive magical rites, which are the counterpart of myths, serve eminently practical func­ tions--to ensure long life, reproduction of game or to make crops grow, to cure sickness, repel enemies, etc. It is hard­ ly surprising then that such systems of conscience and con­ sciousness should corne to " ... govern all details of life." ... a divinatory rite is not generally isolated; it is part of an organized whole. The science of the diviners, therefore, does not form isolated groups of things, but binds these qroups to each other. At the basis of a sys­ tem of divination, there is thus, at least implicitly, a system of classification (PC:77). For instance, of the rather sophisticated divinatory rites of the Chinese Taoists, Durkheim and Mauss remarked: This classification of regions, seasons, things, and animal species dominates the whole of Chinese life. It is the very principle of the famous doctrine of feng-shui, and through this it determines the orien­ tation of buildings, the foundations of towns and hous­ es, the siting of tombs and cemeteries; if certain tasks are undertaken here and others there, if certain affairs are conducted at such and such a time, this is due to reasons based on this traditional systematiza­ tion. And these reasons are not taken only from geo­ mancy; they are also derived from considerations con­ cerning hours, days, months, and years: a certain di­ • • • • • • • • • • • • --195-­ rection which is favorable at one time becomes unfavor­ able at another. Forces agree or discord according to season. Thus not only is everything heterogeneous in time, as in space, but the heterogeneous parts of which these two settings are composed correspond, or are oppo­ sed, and are arranged, in one system. And all these in­ finitely numerous elements are combined to determine the genus and the species of things in nature, the direction of movement of forces, and acts which must be performed, thus giving the impression of a philosophy which is at once subtle and naive, rudimentary and refined. Here we have, then, a highly typical case in which collective thought has worked in a reflective and learned way on themes which are clearly primitive (PC:?3). The intimate linkage of microcosm to macrocosm implies, there­ fore, that structures of morality and knowledge will line up in parallel fashion. There is no escaping this attempt at har­ monious alignment, for the structures of responsibility are preeminently collective, as Durkheim noted with altruistic and fatalistic suicide. No, change comes here through greater a­ lignment or severing of relations between the microcosm and macrocosm, or between systems of morality and knowledge. Not­ ing that "There is nothing more natural, moreover, than the relation thus expressed between divination and the classifi­ cation of things," (PC:??), Durkheim and Mauss compared the Chinese system to the Greek: ... the Chinese classification was essentially an in­ strument of divination. Now the divinatory methods of Greece are remarkably similar to the Chinese, and the similarities denote procedures of the same nature in the way fundamental ideas are classified. The assign­ ment of elements and metals to the planets is a Greek, perhaps Chaldean, fact, as much as a Chinese. Mars is fire, Saturn is water, etc. The relations between cer­ tain sorts of events and certain planets, the simultan­ eous apprehension of space and time, the particular cor­ respondence of a certain kind of undertaking, are found equally in both these different societies. A still more curious coincidence is that which allows a relationship to be established between Chinese and Greek astrology and physiognomy, and perhaps with the Egyptian. The Greek theory of zodiacal and planetary melothesia, which is thought to be of Egyptian origin, is intended to establish strict correspondence between • --196-­ • • • • • • • • • • certain parts of the body and certain positions of the stars, certain orientations, and certain events. Now in China also there exists a famous doctrine based on the same principle. Each element is related to a cardi­ nal point, a constellation and a particular color, and these different groups of things are thought to corres­ pond, in turn, to diverse kinds of organs, inhabited by souls, to emotions, and to different parts whose reunion forms the 'natural character.' Thus, yang, the male prin­ ciple of light and sky, has the liver-rn-the viscera, the bladder as mansion, and the ears and sphincters a­ mong the orifices. This theory, the generality of which is apparent, is not of mere curiosity value; it implies a certain way of conceiving things. By it, the universe is in fact referred to the individual; things are expres­ sed by it, in a sense, as functions of the living organ­ ism; this is really a theory of the microcosm (PC:76-77). Although some have criticized him for ignoring the body (eg. Victor Turner, 1967; P. Worsley, 1956) or the natural environ­ ment, Durkheim did acknowledge, it seems, that primitive and archaic societies did feel compelled to construct parallel alignments between society, the body, and the natural environ­ ment, especially the heavens in Mid-Eastern empires. Thus, world, self, and society are all cosmized. Now, the systems of classification which we call primi­ tive are dominated by the multiple necessities of binding to­ gether moral, cognitive, and affective sentiments into a more or less coherent system. Such cosmological classifications are, at one and the same time, moral, intellectual and emotional, for the body, society, and the environment are also used ana­ logically as resonating microcosms of the other. Thus, the analytical dimensions cross-cut knowledge, belief, and action. The ties which unite things of the same group or differ­ ent groups to each other are themselves conceived as so­ cial ties .... The expressions by which we refer to these relations still have a moral significance; but whereas for us they are hardly more than metaphors, originally they meant what they said. Things of the same class were really considered as relatives of the individuals of the same socml group, and consequently of each other. They are of the 'same flesh,' the same family. Logical rela­ tions are thus, in a sense, domestic relations (PC:84). And since domestic relations are rooted primarily in sentiment, it is not surprising that these other (ana)logical relations too should become suffused with social sentiment. In Moral Ed­ • --197-­ • • • • • • • • • ucation, for instance, Durkheim explicitly noted that cogni­ tive representations must not only be moral reglementations, but affect the sentiments as well. The existential is groun­ ded in the essential which then converts the obligatory into the desirable. Such representations must: ... warm th€ heart and set the will in motion. The point here is not~~nrich the mind with some theor~tical notion ... but to give it a principle of action, which we must make as effective as necessary and possible. In other words, the representation must have something emotional: it must have the character of a sentiment more than a conception. Since, in the long run, one only learns by doing, we must multiply the opportunities in which the sentiments thus communicated to the child can manifest themselves in action. To learn the love of collective life we must live in it, not only in our minds and ima­ ginations, but in reality (ME:229). Although in Primitive Classification Durkheim was temp­ ted~~dentify the appa;ent inability of primitive man to form fixed logical concepts with the fused emotion ladenness of these moral-cognitive representations and reglementations, on the same page Durkheim and Mauss also link these sentiments to the authority of the sacral-magical complex. Indeed, it is the obligatoriness, the collectivization of responsibility for disharmonies between the microcosm and the macrocosm, which tends to make such representations and reglementations sacred. And because inviolable, immune to rational criticism and change . ... emotion is naturally refractory to analysis, or at least lends itself uneasily to it, because it is too com­ plex. Above all, when it has a collective origin it de­ fies critical and rational examination. The pressure ex­ erted by the group on each of its members does not permit individuals to judge freely the notions which society it­ self has elaborated and in which it has placed something of its personality. Such constructs are sacred for indiv­ iduals (PC:88). Indeed, it is this infusion of religious or sacred sentiment into the central classificatory paradigms which characterizes the distinctiveness of the archaic cosmological system . ... it is possible to classify other things than con­ cepts, and otherwise than in accordance with the laws of pure understanding. For in order for it to be pos­ sible for ideas to be systematically arranged for rea­ • • --198-­ • • • • • • • • • sons of sentiment, it is necessary that they should not be pure ideas, but that they should themselves be pro­ ducts of sentiment .... For those who are called primi­ tives, a species of things is not a simple object of knowledge, but corresponds above all to a certain senti­ mental attitude. All kinds of affective elements combine in the representation of it. Religious emotions ... not only give it a special tinge, but attribute to it the most essential properties of which it is constituted. Things are above all sacred or profane, pure or impure, friends or enemies, favorable or unfavorable; ie. their most fundamental characteristics are only expressions of the way in which they affect social sensibilities. The differences in which they are grouped are more affective than intellectual (PC:85-6). Indeed, it is precisely this on-going dialectic between senti­ ment and symbolism, cognition and emotion, imagination and mo­ rality, macrocosm and microcosm, culture and nature, which marks the elementary elaborations of classificatory systems. Now, even granting the more or less direct line of con­ tinuity connecting our own day with these elementary forms, the great gulf remaining between the two is revealed by the religious affectivity of regions of space in primitive systems. In contrast to the uniformly neutral, geometric homogeneity of physical space in modern western thought, primitive cul­ tures have a highly emotionally charged, heterogeneous con­ ception of space. For us, space is formed of similar parts, which are sub­ stitutable one for the other. We have seen, however, that for many peoples it is profoundly differentiated according to regions. This is because each region has its own affective value. Under the influence of diverse sentiments, it is connected with a special religious principle, and consequently it is endowed with virtues sui generis which distinguishes it from all the others. And it is this emotional value of notions which plays the preponderant part in the manner in which ideas are connected or separated. It is the dominant characteris­ tic in classification (PC:86). We see here the stark contrast between the world-views of the "enchanted garden" and the "world-as-machine. 1I How did there come to be this great contrast if, indeed, as Durkheim repeatedly insisted, "there is no gulf between these stages of mankind ll ? Since such primitive cosmological systems are largely built on phenomenological analogies, the • • --199-­ fusion of cognitive, moral and affective categories, socio­ centrism, and sacral-magical protocols, modern systems will • emerge only where classifications become progressively root­ ed in abstract "essential" principles which are true by their very nature, in which structures of conscience and conscious­ ness become separated and the latter granted some legitimate • institutionalizedautonomy, where these categories become de­ tached from their prime or original group status referents, and in which questions of truth and fidelity are resolved pri­ marily by recourse to rational logical and evidential canons • rather than by collective recourse to traditional magical prax­ is. In regard to one of these dimensions, Durkheim and Mauss observed: ... the history of scientific classification is, in • the last analysis, the history of the stages by which this element of social affectivity has progressively weakened, leaving more and more room for the reflect­ ive thought of individuals (PC:8 ). It is important to recognize, moreover, that this evolution • does not come about simply through the antagonism of one mode of classification to the other, and the replacement of the former by the latter. Rather, as Benjamin Nelson (1973a) and Edmund Leites (1974) have realized, the passage to modernity • comes about through the expansion of structures of fraterni­ zation, of universalization, of rationalization, within spe­ fic religiously based cultural traditions. Indeed, as they emphasize, conflict over the legitimacy of alternate anchors • of moral and intellectual legitimacy, and structures of res­ ponsibility, are central to this critical evolutionary pas­ sage from "sacral-magical" to "faith" to "rational" structures of conscience and consciousness. • Certainly, one of the most valuable case-studies, all the more profound because it combines Durkheimian and Weber­ ian interpretive perspectives, of a classificatory system in which categories are primarily related to specific group sta­ • tuses and to the ritual praxis associated with them is Louis Dumont's study of the sacral foundations of Indian social or­ ganization in Homo Hierarchicus (1970). In contrast to the • • • • • • I I. • • • • --200-­ western notion of social stratification as rooted primarily in economic criteria, Dumont shows how the religious opposi­ tion between the pure and the impure serves as the key organ­ izing principle for cultural and structural legitimacy in the Indian caste organization. Following both Nelson and Dumont, Jerome Gittleman offers these valuable observations: Their description of the persistent authority of sacro­ magical structures in the social institution of 'caste' illustrates the immense difficulty of the historical passage from 'sacro-magical' to 'faith' structures of consciousness. In his essay 'For a Sociology of India,' Louis Dumont points out that Indian culture has the appearance of a sort of 'history museum' in which new culture traits are pulled up, juxtaposed, or sedimented upon the old traits, but do not replace them. Dumont argues that this is due to the hierarchical nature of Indian so­ ciety which places a premium upon the prestige of sta­ tus attaching to all things, and not upon their intrin­ sic functions. In another essay, , A Structural Defini­ tion of a Folk Deity,' Dumont refers to the 'familiar impossibility of universal judgements in India,' which he explains by reference to the prescriptive structures of caste hierarchy: 'In the caste society nothing is true by nature and everything by situation, there are no essences but only relations.' By 'relations' Dumont is referring (in Nelson's language) to the sacro-magi­ cal definition of 'situation' prescribed ritualistical­ ly for each caste status--a particularistic, rigid, col­ lective praxis which defines the sociocultural spaces allocated to things, cognitions, and acts in terms of a sacro-magical whole. The term 'essences' refers to those cultural universals which would make it possible to describe things in terms of the category 'true by nature' if the sacro-magical rites of collective praxis had not preempted the logical space 'true' (1974:83). Thus, the failure to break with the sociocentric referent-­ the lack of cross-cutting social bonds of widening fraterni­ zation--and the sacro-magical traditional collective proto­ cols constituted, in Weber's terms, an almost "ineradicable obstacle" to modernization. Durkheim and Mauss were sensitive to the mechanics of these crucially significant world-historical processes. They well knew both the positive and negative results of the per­ meation of society and culture by sacral and magical ration­ ales. Evoking echoes of Weber's image of archaic culture as • • -.,.201-­ • • • • • • • • • an "enchanted garden," Durkheim observed in 1912: The field of religious things extends well beyond the limits within which it seemed to be confined at first. It embraces not only the totemic animals and the human members of the clan, but since no known thing exists that is not classified in a clan and under a totem, there is likewise nothing which does not receive to some degree something of a religious character, When, in the religions which later came into being, the gods properly so-called appear, this one over the sea, that one over the air, another over the harvest or over the fruits, etc., and each of these provinces of nature will be believed to draw what life there is in it from the god upon whom it depends. This division of nature among these different divinities constitutes the conception which these religions give us of the universe~.Far from being limited to one or two categories of beings, the domain of totemic religion extends to the final limits of the knomuniverse. Just like the Greek religion, it puts the divine everywhere; the celebrated formula "everything is full of the gods" might equally well ser­ ve it as a motto (EF:179-80). And like Weber, Durkheim noted an important parallel between the evolution of the gods, ethical obligations, structures of conscience and consciousness especially in terms of individua­ tion of responsibility, and the evolution of societies. In sum, as societies develop, so too do their symbolic and prime classificatory systems, especially their notions of gods as symbols of prime potency. But this last is a theme which we must save for the chapter after this on the genetic-evolu­ tionary significance of the primitive sacral complex as the womb of society, culture, and the person. Having explored in relative detail Durkheim's view of the building of classifi­ catory systems, both moral and cognitive, through the exten­ sion of a series of symbolic equations, rooted in religion, which serves to cosmicize the human world and valorize human experience, let us now turn our attention to the final phase of symbolic process. I mean the overcoming of invidious dual­ isms which have thus been endlessly generated through symbol­ ic transformations. Tension-creating polarities, symbolic e­ quations which extend the polarities, and then unity through symbolic transformations thus constitute the three main phases of symbolic process. • • --202-­ 8. Symbolic Transformations: The Positive Communion Rites • Preface. W.H. Stanner (1967) has suggested that the most • viable aspect of nurkheim's sociology of religion is his dy­ namic theory of symbolic process which focussed essentially on cultural operations and transactions concerning value. I generally agree with Stanner, and even Parsons (1973:175) has complimented the former's quasi-nurkheimian efforts in this direction. Now, as Kenneth Burke has rightly emphasized over the • years, the structure of symbolic action is inherently drama­ • tic (or rhetorical and dialectical). As we have discovered using nurkheim's materials, the temporal structure of generic symbolic action reveals at least three basic phases. First, binary polarities introduce a basic tension into human exper­ ience; dilemmas energize Everyman. Second, through metaphor and analogy, a whole series of symbolic equations, radiating out from the original opposition, serve to bind together dif­ • ferent experiences in a resonating system charged with multi­ ple levels of meaning. The greater the degree of lamination, or multiple linkage of meanings on several levels, the great­ • er the symbolic load, and thus the greater the potency and significance. Third, tension is resolved, and the powers of • imagination and will released, through a crucial transforma­ tion of the mounting oppositions into a new and higher unity. All human symbolic action thus has an inherently dramatic de­ • sign. Van Gennep also saw these crucial phases with his three stages of "rites of passage"--separation, transition, and in­ corporation (or preliminal, liminal, and ~ost-liminal, 1960: ego 11). In this section we shall investigate the importance • of positive communion rites which serve to effect a creative symbolic transformation from the profane to the sacred. As we proceed, we should recall, for instance, Burke's counsel that " ... in the structural analysis of the symbolic act, not only the matter of "what equals what", but also the matter of "from what to what" (1973:38) is important. Burke • • --2P3-­ offers some basic hermeneutical rules here: • • • • • • • • • The first step ..• requires us to get our equations inductively, by tracing down the interrelationships as revealed by the objective structure of the book it­ ~elf•... Along with the distinction between opposing principles, we should note the development of from what to what (1973:70-71). Thus, like Levi-Strauss (eg. in the first volume of his Mytho­ logiques, The Raw and the Cooked, 1969), Burke goes so far as to suggest a notation for these inner relationships: "The two main symbols for charting structural relationships would be the sign for equals (=) and some such sign as the arrow (from ~ to)" (1973: 74). Even though Burke developed his theories separately from Durkheim's influence, Parsons (1973:176) cred­ its the former with great insight into the " ... fully mature Durkheimian position developed in The Elementary Forms." Nhile Levi-Strauss's structuralism is rather different from Burke's, clearly both structuralist and dramatistic analysis converge in their common concern with the inner form of symbolic pro­ cess as a series of self-equilibrating equations and trans­ formations (see also Jean Piaget, Structuralism, 1971). Both perspectives are concerned with the deep constitutive and transformative processes making up the human symbolic economy. Finally, we would do well to remember here that Durk­ heim chose to analyze religious phenomena in depth because they represent the most systematic and sophisticated transla­ tion of generic symbolic processes into explicit symbolic forms. Religious processes were analytically important, in short, for the light they helped shed on generic symbolic processes. Certainly, as a non-believer, Durkheim did not accredit the truth claims of religions as such: nor do we need to do so here in our review of his epochal discovery and elaboration of the inner structure of generic human sym­ bolic process. Rather, as Kenneth Burke (eg. 1970) translates theological relationships and terms into their "logological" equivalents, so too we are primarily concerned here with re­ translating back religious symbols into their original and constitutive sociocultural equivalents. Thus, we may be jus­ • ------------------------------------------------ -------- • • I. • • • • • • • --204-­ tified, to a certain extent, in considering the two prime religious modes of asceticism and mysticism as serving to transfigure two basic phases of sociocultural process. Just as all religions embody, to a greater or lesser extent, as­ cetic and mystical modes (see especially Max T"leber,1963,1968), so too does the generic human symbolIc process which religion translates into sacral terms also contain both negative (asce­ tic) and positive (mystical) phases. Separation and reunifi­ cation are thus the rhetorical and dialectical phases of all human symbolic processes. a. Symbolic Metamorphoses: The Sacred and the Profane Are Not Closed to Each.Other While I do not wish to defend Durkheim's hyperbole in regard to the so-called "absoluteness" of the opposition be­ tween sacred and profane, I have tried to demonstrate that his rhetorical excesses derived in large part from Durkheim's own symbolic equation of the profane with egoistic and util­ itarian economic activity. But contrary to many of Durkheim's critics who were misled by the strident tone of some of his programmatic declarations, Durkheim himself did not treat the contrast between the sacred and the profane as absolute in practice. Therefore, before we explore some of the materials concerning communion rites, we would do well to note that Durkheim observed, in the first section of The Elementary Forms, that symbolic metamorphoses from one category of be­ ing to another can and do, indeed must, take place. The sa­ cred and the profane are thus not hermetically sealed boxes from which whole categories of existence can never escape. This is not equivalent to saying that a being can never pass from one of these worlds into another: but the manner in which this passage is effected, when it takes place, puts into relief the essential duality of the two kingdoms. In fact, it implies a veritable metamorphosis (EF:54). Now, close exegesis reveals that Durkheim did not treat this basic dichotomy as rigidly or statically as his critics, especially Evans-Pritchard n965) or Stanner (1967), contend. • • • • • • • • • • • --205-­ As always, Durkheim merely sharpened their opposition in or­ der to heighten the drama of their inevitable resolution, and thus, their inner transformation and reunification. For instan­ ce, after emphasizing the universality of the sacred/profane opposition early in The Elementary Forms, Durkheim acknowled­ ged: This interdiction cannot go so far as to make all com­ munication between the two worlds impossible, for if the profane could in no way enter into relations with the sacred, this latter would be good for nothing (EF:55). Further, did not Durkheim remark that " ... every consecration by means of annointing or washing consis~in transferring into a profane object the sanctifying virtues of a sacred one" (EF: 362)? Now, if one looks to the latter phases of Durkheim's treatment of generic symbolic process in his 1912 masterwork, you shall discover that Durkheim did indeed explore the sym­ bolic transformations from one state of being to another. In­ deed, Durkheim acknowledged that sacred beings: •.. would serve for nothing and have no reason whatso­ ever for their existence if they could not come in con­ tact with ••• worshippers ...• There is no positive rite which does not constitute a veritable sacrilege, for a man cannot hold commerce with sacred beings without crossing a barrier which should ordinarily keep them separate (EF:379-80). For what, indeea, wouldbe the point of separating all that is sacred from all that is profane if there were not some regu­ larly scheduled means of passing from the latter to the form­ er, if'there were no way for harmony between micro and macro­ cosm to be restored? It would have been almost impossible for Durkheim to leave that "absolute'! and irreconcilable opposition floating in the air, forever incapable of resolution. For the "abso­ luteness" of this opposition implies an exclusively rhetorical structure to human action. But not only is this unlikely in the nature of symbolic processes, it also ignores the fact that Durkheim, as a master dialectician, always recogni­ zed the ever-present desire for reconciliation of tension-fil­ led opposites in a new and creative unity. As Burke constantly reminds us, to separate implies a ioininq. Diversity ;mpli~s • • --206-­ unity, "extremes meet" as Coleridge said. No, in the end, • there must always be some path which men can take to restore themselves and their troubled worlds to wholeness, to health and well-being. Rites are these mediums of symbolic metamor­ phoses; rites are collective moral therapeutics. • In addition, Evans-Pritchard (eg. 1965:6S) charges Durk­ heim's basic dichotomy with "situational inflexibility." But, • once again, if we set aside Durkheim's rhetorically inspired programmatic declarations, we discover that, in practice, Durk­ heim did indeed recognize what Van Gennep called the "pivot­ ing of the sacred" around a few central symbolic axes. In the • first part of The Elementary Forms did not Durkheim acknow­ ledge that " ... it must not be lost to view that there are sa­ cred things of every degree, and there are some in relation to which a man feels himself relatively at ease" (EF:S3)? • It should, first of all, be remembered that at the heart of the sacramental world-view is the implicit declaration that the orders of being are not necessarily closed to one another, and that the exercise of this faith depends especially upon special situational dispensations to ritually ingest a tiny part of the sacred totem. • The profane function of vegetables and even of animals is ordinarily to serve as food; then the sacred char­ • acter of the totemic animal or plant is shown by the fact that it is forbidden to eat them. It is true that since they are sacred things, they can enter into the composition of certain mystical repasts, and ... some­ times serve as veritable sacraments; yet normally they cannot be used for everyday consumption (EF:ISO-I). In addition, it should be recalled that whether or not a sa­ cralization of the profane or a profanation of the sacred oc­ curs depends upon the proper approach to any communion ritual. • Sacrilege occurs when the taboos surrounding the sacred ob­ • jects are violated; yet there is no sacrilege when the ap­ propriate preparatory steps have been taken. Indeed, even: ... when it is permitted to eat the plant or animal that serves as totem, it is not possible to do so freely; only a litte bit may be taken at a time. To go beyond this amount is a ritual fault that has grave consequences (EF:ISI). • • • • • • • • • • • --207-­ Further, the definition of sacralization and sacrilege are differentiated by degree for different types of people. That is, different roles are granted differential dispensations to approach the sacred objects; this is, of course, the begin­ ning of specialization and differentiation of religious roles. The old men and those who have attained a high reli­ gious dignity are freed from the restrictions under which ordinary men are placed. They can eat the sacred thing because they are sacred themselves; this rule is in no way peculiar to totemism, but it is found in the most diverse religions (EF:152; see also 346,#47). Now, as there are always exceptions to the rule, Durk­ heim observed that there are also exceptions to the strict totemic food interdictions. Although Evans-Pritchard charged that Durkheim's sacred/profane dichotomy was "situationally inflexible," Durkheim did in fact note that practical neces­ sity changed the definition of the sacral situation . .•. here also there are exceptions and tolerations .•. especially in the case of necessity, when the totem is a dangerous animal, for example, or when the man has nothing to eat. There are certain tribes where men are forbidden to hunt the animals whose name they bear, on their own accounts, but where they may kill them for others. But the way in which this act is generally accomplished clearly indicates that it is something illicit. Oneexcuses himself as though for a fault, and bears witness to the chagrin which he suffers, and the repugnance which he feels, while precautions are taken that the animal may suf­ fer as little as possible (EF:154). As with the case of King David and his men eating the temple showbreads in time of famine, Durkheim recognized (to borrow a term from Van Gennep ) the "pivoting of the sacred" along several symbolic axes. Let us conclude this brief excursus with Van Gennep's unjustifiably overlooked formulation of this important problem. Characteristically, the presence of the sacred (and the performance of appropriate rites) is variable. Sacredness as an attribute is not absolute; it is brought into play by the nature of particular situa­ tions .... The "magic circles" pivot, shifting as a person moves from one place in society to another. The categories and concepts which embody them operate in such a way that whoever passes through the various positions of a lifetime one day sees the sacred where • • • • • • • • • • • --208-­ before he has seen the profane, or vice versa. Such changes of condition do not occur without disturbing the life of society and of the individual, and it is the function of the rites of passage to reduce their normal effects (1960:12-13). b. The Transition From Negative to Positive Rites Observing that "The absolute and universal nature of the contrast between the sacred and the profane does not mean that things or beings cannot or do not pass from one sphere to another" (1974:174), Robert Nisbet also rightly notes that the negative or ascetic rites serve merely as a preparatory stage to the passage to the sacred pole of sociocultural life "Purification rites, as in initiation or eucharistic ceremon­ ies, are the means through which a person or thing passes from the profane state to the sacred" (1974:174). Negative or as­ cetic rites, as we have seen, serve to demarcate the boundar­ ies between the sacred and the profane, and thus to progres­ sively separate all that which is aligned with the latter from the former. By definition sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break in continuity between them and the profane beings .... A whole group of rites has the object of realizing this state of separation which is essential. Since their function is to prevent undue mixings and to keep these two dOlTI<"l i.ns from encroaching upon the other, they are only able to impose abstentions or negative acts taboos or interdictions (EF:337-8). Let us now briefly explore Durkheim's description of the tran­ sition from the negative, ascetic rites, to the positive com­ munion ri tes . Durkheim himself observed that the whole system of sa­ cral interdictions, abstentions, purifications, etc. signify a progressive shedding of profane states, and thus serve as the necessary preparation for eventual sacral reunification. Up to the present, the negative cult has been presen­ ted to us only as a system of abstentions. So it seems to serve only to inhibit activity, and not to stimulate it or modify it. And yet, as an unexpected reaction to this inhibitive effect, it is found to exercise a posi­ tive action of the highest importance over the religious and moral nature of the individual (EF:348). • I • • • • • • • • • • • --209-­ We might first recall, as Kenneth Burke (eg. 1970, 1966) has insisted over the years, that the negative is crucial to hu­ man symbolicity. For only through the negative, in the sense of moral commands, is man moralized. Thus, man becomes a mor­ al personality through the negative, through abstention and purification. For the suffering inherent in the negative thrust means that the individual rises above the profane; in other words, culture moralizes nature. The positive cult is possible only when a man is train­ ed to renouncement, to abnegation, to detachment from self, and consequently to suffering...• It is necessary that he train himself, and it is to this that the ascet­ ic practices tend. So the suffering which they impose is not arbitrary and sterile cruelty; it is a necessary school ...• Suffering is the sign that certain of the bonds attaching him to his profane environment are bro­ ken; so it testifies that he is partially freed from the environment and, consequently, it is justly considered the instrument of deliverance .•.• He is stronger than na­ ture because he makes it subside (EF:35~. ­ Indeed, the passage from the profane to the sacred re­ quires a whole series of rites which serve to transform and liberate the moral subject. Van Gennep clearly recognized this with his distinctions between rites of separation (pre­ liminal), transition (liminal), and incorporation (post-lim­ inal). And Durkheim, in his discussion of the sacral origins of property, for instance, provided many insights into the symbolic significance of crossing thresholds and boundaries. In fact, owing to the barrier which separates the sa­ cred from the profane, a man cannot enter into inti­ mate relations with sacred things except after rid­ ding himself of all that is profane in him. He can­ not lead a religious life of even a slight intensity unless he commences by withdrawing more or less com­ pletely from the temporal life. So the negative cult is in one sense a means in view of an end: it is a condition of access to the positive cult. It does not confine itself to protecting sacred beings from vul­ gar contact; it acts upon the worshipper himself and modifies his condition positively. The man who has submitted himself to its prescribed interdictions is not the same afterwards as he was before. Before,he he was an ordinary being who, for this reason, had to keep at a distance from the religious forces. Afterwards, he is on a more equal footing with them; he has approached the sacred by the very act of leav­ • --210-­ • • • • • • • • • ing the profane; he has purified and sanctified him­ self by the very act of debasing himself from the ba~~ i~1 ~rivial matters that debased his nature. So the~~l~e~ confer efficient powers just as well as the positive ones; the first, like the second, can serve to elevate the religious tone of the individual .... No one can engage in a religious ceremony of any im­ portance without first submitting himself to a sort of preliminary initiation which introduces him pro­ gressively into the sacred world. Unctions, lustra­ tions, benedictions or any essentially positive oper­ ation may be used for this purpose; but the same re­ sult may be attained by means of fasts and vigils or retreat and silence, that is to say, by ritual abstin­ ences which are nothing more than certain interdictions put in practice (EF:348). Indeed, noting that "asceticism ... is an integral part of human culture" (EF:356), Durkheim emphasized the universality of the separation phase as preparatory to the reunification phase. There is no interdict, the observance of which does not have an ascetic character to a certain degree ••.. In order to have real asceticism, it is sufficient for these practices to develop in such a way as to become the basis of a veritable scheme of life. Norm­ ally the negative cult serves only as an introduction and preparation for the positive cult (EF:350). Finally, we might recall, as Nisbet U974) reminds us, that Durkheim considered ascetic suffering as good, for it creates self-discipline, it moralizes the ego. It implies a reorder­ ing of the world, the overcoming of nature by culture, a re­ establishment of the constitutive boundaries of the great "Yea and Nay" of all things. And as fasting increases our hunger for the "Bread of Life," so privation, abstinence, and suffering increases the tension to consummate the posi­ tive pole of sociocultural life . ..• abstinences and privations do not come without suffering. We hold to the profane world by all the fibers of our flesh; our senses attach us to it; our life depends upon it. It is not merely the na­ tural theater of our activity; it penetrates us from every side; it is a part of ourselves. So we cannot detach ourselves from it without doing violence to our nature and without painfully wounding our in­ stincts. In other words, the negative cult cannot develop without causing suffering. Pain is one of its necessary conditions (EF:351). ----------------------------------------------- • • • • • • • • • • --211-~ Let us next briefly explore the significance of the "liminal" period (see V. Turner, 1967 especially), seen for example in initiation ceremonies, in which a person's change in social status is portrayed and experienced as a change in being. These are critical transformation points, "watershed moments," when there are "changes of slope" (as Burke sug­ gests) in one's life trajectory. Here, the young initiates are forced to become veritable ascetics for a short while-­ separated from society, they are forced to undergo various preparatory privations, abstentions, sufferings. This is what generally takes place at certain criti­ cal periods when, for a relatively short time, it is necessary to bring about a grave change of condition in a subject. Then, in order to introduce him more ra­ pidly into the circle of sacred things with which he must be put into contact he is separated violently from the profane world; but this does not come with­ out abstinences, and an exceptional recrudescence of the system of interdicts. Now this is just what hap­ pens in Australia at the moment of initiation. In or­ der to transform youth into men, it is necessary to make them live the life of a veritable ascetic. Mrs. Parker very justly calls them the monks of Baime (EF: 351) . Often this passage from a profane to a sacred status, that is initation into the constitutive cultural mysteries and ranks (see the works of Kenneth Burke), is conceived of as a meta­ morphosis, a transformation totius Substantiae . .•• initiation is a long series of ceremonies with the the object of introducing the young man into the reli­ gious life: for the first time, he leaves the purely profane world where he passed his first infancy, and enters into the world of sacred things. Now this chan­ ge of state is thought of, not as a simple and regu­ lar development of pre-existent germs, but as a trans­ formation totius substantiae, of the whole being. It is said that at this moment the young man dies, that the person that he was ceases to exist, and that ano­ ther is instantly substituted for it. He is reborn under a new form. Appropriate ceremonies are felt to bring about this death and rebirth •... Does this not prove that between the profane being which he was and the religious being which he becomes, there is a break of continuity (EF:54)? • • • • • • • • • • • --212-­ Later in The Elementary Forms, Durkheim explored some of the specific privations required of the initiate in various Australian societies. The neophyte is submitted to a great variety of nega­ tive rites. He must withdraw from the society in which his existence has beenoa~sed up until then, and from almost all human society. Not only is it forbidden for him to see women and unitiated persons, but he al­ so goes to live in the brush, far from his fellows, under the direction of some old men, who serve him as godfathers. So very true it is that the forest is con­ sidered his natural environment, that in a certain num­ ber of tribes, the word with which the initiation is designated signifies "that which is from the forest." For this same reason, he is frequently decorated with leaves during the ceremonies at which he assists. In this way he passesbng months, interspersed from time to time with rites in which he must take a part. This time is a period of all sorts of abstinences for him. A multitude of foods are forbidden him •.• he is allow­ ed only that quantity of food which is absolutely in­ dispensable for the maintenance of life~ he is even sometimes bound to a rigorous fast, or must eat impure foods. When he eats, he must not touch the food with his hands. In some cases, he must go beg for his food. Likewise, he sleeps only as much as is indispensable. He must abstain from talking ••. it is by signs that he makes known his needs. He must not wash; sometimes he must not move. He remains stretched out upon the earth, immobile, and without clothing of any sort (EF: 348) . Now, clearly one recurrent image for portraying this change of status and being is the cycle of death and rebirth. As Kenneth Burke says, "The symbolic slaying of an old self is complemented by the emergence of a new self" (1973:39). Very often this death to society, which is as Durkheim obser­ ved (eg. EF:55), the extreme logical expression of the ascet­ ic thrust, is signified by withdrawl, segregation, by fast­ ing, going naked, and so forth; in short, by separation from all those activities and ties which constitute the daily ground of prior social and cultural experience. Now the result of the numerous interdictions is to bring about a radical change of condition for the initiate. Before the initiation, he lived with the women~ he was excluded from the cult. After it, he is admitted to the society of men~ he takes part in • • • • • • • • • • • --213-­ the rites, and has acquired a sacred character. The metamorphosis is so complete that it is sometimes re­ presented as a second birth. They imagine that the profane person, who was the young man up until then, has died and been carried away by the god of the ini­ tiation ... and that quite another individual has ta­ ken the place of the one that no longer is. So here we find the very heart of the positive effects of which negative rites are capable (EF:349-S0). Now, the very act of withdrawal from all these social forms and statuses means that the initiate becomes suspend­ ed in a "liminal" stage, as Turner (1967) after Van Gennep calls it, which is "betwixt and between." Here, the initia­ tes are conceived of as neither children nor adults, neither living nor dead, and both living and dead, when seen from another aspect, as Turner notes. Their condition is one of ambiguity and paradox, a confusion of all the normal cate­ gories. Withdrawins from the ordered social and cultural microcosm of the village, the initiate returns to that un­ differentiated pole of experience--the forest, where he sheds his clothes, the marks of his social status, and co­ vers himself with leaves. Quoting Jacob Boehme's aphorism that "In Yea and Nay all things consist," Turner observes: Liminality may be regarded as the Nay to all posi­ tive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise (Turner, 1967: 97). Noting Mary Douglas's (1966) suggestion that "the unclear is the unclean," Turner observes that the initiates " ... as a transitional being are considered particularly polluting, since they are neither one thing or another, or maybe both" (1967:97). Only the old men, who are, so to speak, "inocu­ lated'against them because of their own store of sacredness, are allowed commerce with these ambiguously sacred and pro­ fane transitional beings. We are not dealing with structural contradictions when we discuss liminality, but with the essentially unstructured (which is at once destructured and pre­ structured) and often the people themselves see this in terms of bringing neophytes into close connection • • --214-­ • with the deity or with superhuman power, with what is, in fact, often regarded as the unbounded, the infinite, the limitless. Since neophytes are not only structural­ ly invisible (though physically visible), and ritually polluting, they are very commonly secluded •.. from the realm of culturally defined and ordered states and sta­ tuses (1967:98). • We shall briefly explore Durkheim's own perceptions of the inherent ambiguity of sacred forces in the following section. Since sex distinctions are so important in primitive societies, during the liminal period the initiate is portray­ • ed as sexless, or as androgynous. Turner observes: • •.. in liminal situations (in kinship dominated socie­ ties) neophytes are sometimes ..• symbolically repre­ sented as neither being male nor female. They are sym­ bolically either sexless or bisexual, and may be re­ garded as a kind of human prima materia--as undiffer­ entiated raw material. [For example, in Plato's SympO­ • sium] the first humans were androgynes. If the liminal period is seen as an interstructural phase in social dynamics, the symbolism both of androgyny and sexless­ ness immediately becomes intelligible in soc~ological terms without the need to import psychological (espe­ cially depth-psychological) explanations. Since sex distinctions are important components of structural status, in a structureless realm they do not apply (1967 :98-99) . Further, since property is an essential component of the norm­ • al social order, the transitional beings must cast away their possessions. Again, for those who would be reborn in a new faith, all religions require a special form of institutiona­ lized poverty, which signifies disengagement from the things • of this world. Turner notes: • A further structurally negative characteristic of transitional beings is that they have nothing. They have no status, property, insignia, secular clothing, rank, kinship position, nothing to demarcate them structurally from their fellows. Rights over proper­ ty, goods, and services inhere in positions in the politico-jural structure. Since they do not occupy such positions, neophytes exercise no such rights (1967:98) • The symbolic analogues of the liminal period, in which • retreat is preparatory to return (ala Toynbee), are often bor­ rowed from basic organic processes. Turner observes: • • • • • • • • • • • --215-­ ... certain liminal processes are regarded as analo­ gous to those of gestation, partuition, and suckling. Undoing, dissolution, decomposition, are accompanied by processes of growth, transformation, and the re­ formulation of old elements into new patterns (1967: 99) . Further, in representations of the ambiguous nature of the transitional period, Turner notes how the principle of sym­ bolic economy utilizes symbols carrying simultaneously sev­ eral meanings. The greater the multiplicity of meanings, the greater the symbolic load and potency; thus, multivalent sym­ bols are central to representations in this phase. •.. logically antithetical processes of death and growth may be represented by the same tokens, for example, by huts and tunnels that are at once tombs and wombs, by lunar symbolism (for the same moon waxes and wanes), by snake symbolism (for the snake appears to die, only to shed its old skin and reap­ pear), by the bear (for the bear "dies" in autumn and is "reborn" in the spring), by nakedness (which is at once the mark of a newborn infant and a corp­ se prepared for burial), and by innumerable other symbolic formations and actions. This coincidence of opposite processes and notions in a single repre­ sentation characterizes the peculiar unity of the liminal: that which is neither this nor that, and yet is both (1967:99). Thus, we see that in the "liminal" period, by its nega­ tive thrust, the "wayfarer" is returned to the primal undif­ ferentiated ground of being, what Burke (1966:46) notes has been called, in negative theology, the Urground, or as Boeh­ me termed it, the Unground. Here contact is reestablished with the primal unity, the time before distinction and form emerged. Here men reimmerse themselves in the original gen­ erative sources from which men were originally shaped, the primal clay. Again and again (eg. Genesis), we see religions portraying the time before time as formlessness, darkness, a primordial ocean, and so on, in which there is a creation of cosmos from chaos. The primordial act of creation is thus also a separation--the light from darkness, the waters above from the waters below, which signals the emergence of form and finiteness. Durkheim himself observed the importance of this aspect of symbolic process in many primitive creation • • • • • • • • • • • --216-­ myths. other Australian societies place at the begin­ ning of humanity either strange animals from which men were descended in some unknown way, or mixed beings, half-way between the two kingdoms, or else unformed creatures, hardly representable, deprived of all determined organs, and even of all definite members, and the different parts of whose bodies were hardly outlined. Mythical powers, sometimes conceived under the form of animals, then interven­ ed and made men out of these ambiguous and innumer­ able beings which Spencer and Gillen say represent "stages in the transformation of animals and plants into human beings." These transformations are repre­ sented to us under the form of violent and, as it were, surgical operations. It is under the blow of an axe or, if the operator is a bird, blows of the beak, that the human individual was carved out of this shapeless mass, his mouth opened and his nos­ trils pierced. Analogous legends are found in Amer­ ica, except that owing to the more highly developed mentality of these peoples, the representations which they employ do not contain confusions so troublesome for the mind. Sometimes it is a legendary personage who, by the act of his power, metamorphosed the ani­ mal who gives its name to the clan into a man. Some­ times the myth attempts to explain how, by a series of merely human events and a sort of spontaneous evo­ lution, the animal transforms himself little by lit­ tle, and finally took on a human form (EF:157-S). Finally, Turner notes how, as the initiation progres­ ses from the negative to positive aspects and the liminal being is given greater form, the initiate is then introduced to the esoteric mysteries, the constitutive gnosis of the cult. Indeed, it is the communication of these sacra which confers form on the moral subject. The arcane knowledge or gnosis obtained in the limi­ nal period is felt to change the inmost nature of the neophyte, impressing him as a seal impresses wax, with the characteristics of his new state. It is not a mere acquisition of knowledge, but a change in being . ... Communication of the sacra is the heart of the liminal matter (1967:102). Indeed, as with Parsons' 1973 suggestions that Durkheim came to conceive the significance of the generic symbolic religious process as equivalent to social DNA, so too does Turner con­ sider the communication of these constitutive sacral symbols as the foundation of the entire culture. • • --217-­ • The central cluster of non-logical sacra is then the symbolic template of the whole system of beliefs and values in a given culture, its archetypal paradigm • and ultimate measure.... The term archetype denotes in Greek a master stamp or impress, and these sacra, presented with numinous simplicity, stamp into neo­ phytes the basic assumptions of their culture .... The communication of sacra both teaches the neophytes how to think with some degree of abstraction about • their cultural milieu and gives them ultimate stan­ dards of reference. At the same time, it is believed to change their nature, transform them from one kind of human being into another. It intimately unites man and office. But for a variable while, there was an uncommitted man, an individual rather than a sacral persona, in a sacred community of individuals (1967: 108) • Let us next turn to consider Durkheim's notion of the ambi­ • guity of sacredness. c. The Ambiguity of the Notion of Sacredness Not only was Durkheim's sacred/profane dichotomy not • a rigid opposition, but we should also note that Durkheim dis­ tinguished between various forms of sacredness itself, the prime constitutive pole of sociocultural life and phenomeno­ logical action. Horeover, Durkheim noted how these subdivi­ • sions of the sacred pole are not merely antagonistic but, given certain conditions, may be transformed one into the other. Now, perhaps Rudolf Otto's Idea of the Holy is the most famous expression of the duality of the "numinous." • Like Otto, Durkheim noted that the sacred simultaneous~at­ tracts and repels us; that we may simultaneously entertain two opposed attitudes toward it--horror and respect, awe and fascination. Such ambivalent sentiments toward the pure and • the impure are directed toward those aspects of life endowed with a special potency, with "charisma" as Weber said. As Kenneth Burke notes, "Sacer might be more accurately trans­ lated as "untouchable," since the extremely good, the extrem­ • ely bad, and the extremely powerful are equally "untouchable" (1973:55). In short, Durkheim observed that there were two poles within the sacred segment of culture; and he further • , --218-­ noted that the "sacredly inauspicious", the impure, may be transformed into the pure. When there is a passage from nega­ , tive to positive status by situational changes, theirdefini­ , tions are transformed by their different meanings in differ­ ent contexts. As Mary Douglas observes: Granted that disorder spoils pattern, it also provides the materials of pattern. Order implies restriction ... so disorder by implication is unlimited ... its poten­ , ,tial for patterning is indefinite. This is why, though we Seek to create order, we do not simply condemn dis­ order. We recognize that it is destructive to existing patterns; also that it has potentiality. It symbolizes both danger and power. Ritual recognizes the potency , of disorder (1966:94 ). Let us now brie.Ely explore' Durkheim' s recognition of this im­ portant insight, developed most fully by the British anthro­ pologists of religion and ritual, that "formlessness is cred­ ited with powers, some dangerous, some good," and Van Gennep's insight that "danger lies in marginal states." First, it should be recalled that Durkheim's distinct­ , ion between the,sacredly inauspicious and the sacredly auspi­ cious was situationally defined, that is, these two aspects of the sacred pole of symbolic life depended on the specific definition of the situation. For example, only under certain • circumstances maya man ingest the totemic animal; without a whole series of ,preparations, it becomes sacrilege and con­ fers guilt instead of grace. It is a profanation of the sacred when performed "out of turn." • Owing to the contagiousness inherent in all that is sacred, a profane being cannot violate an interdict without having the religi6us force, to which he ha~ • upduly approached, extend itself over him and estab­ lish its empire over him. But, as there is an antag­ onism between them, he becomes dependent upon a hos­ tile power, whose hostility cannot fail to manifest itself in the form of violent reactions which destroy him. This is why sickness or death are considered the natural consequences of transgressions of this sort; and they are consequences which are believed to come by themselves, by a sort of physical necessity. The • guilty man feels himself attacked by a force which dominates him and against which he'is powerless. Has he eaten the totemic animal? Then he feels it penetra­ ting him and gnawing at his vitals; he lies down on the ground and awaits death (EF:360). • • • • • • • • • • • --219-­ Indeed, Durkheim goes on to remark that "Every profanation implies a consecration": but one which is dreadful, both for the subject consecrated and for those who approach him. It is the consequences of this consecration which sanc­ tion, in part, the interdict (EF:360). And Durkheim asks us: "Does not every consecration by means of annointing or washing consist in transferring into a pro­ fane object the sanctifying virtues of a sacred one" (EF:362)? Now, Durkheim repeatedly:raveRobertson Smith credit here for having been one of the first to recognize the inherent am­ biguity of the notion of sacredness (see, however, Evans-Pritch­ ard, 1965:51-2). This crucial duality or multivalency of sa­ cral energies raises the problem of situational shifts, com­ plex inversions, and transformations of symbolic equations. One of the greatest services which Robertson Smith has rendered to the science of religions is to have pointed out the ambiguity of the notion of sacredness. Religious forces are of two sorts. Some are benefi­ cent guardians of the physical and moral order, dis­ pensers of life and health and all the qualities which men esteem: this is the case with the totemic principle, spread out in the whole species, the my­ thical ancestor, the animal-protector, the civili­ zing heroes, and the tutelar gods of every kind and degree. It matters little whether they are conceived as distinct personalities or as diffused energies; under either form they fulfill the same function and affect the minds of the believers in the same way: the respect which they inspire is mixed with love and gra­ titude. The things and the persons which are normally connected with them participate in the same sentiments and the same character: these are the holy things and persons. Such are the spots consecrated to the cult, the objects which serve in the regular rites, the priests, the ascetics, etc. On the other hand, there are evil ~nd impure powers, productive of disorders, causes of death and sickness, instigatnrs of sacrilege. The only sentiments which men have for them are a fear into which horror gener­ ally enters. Such are the forces upon which and by which the sorcerer acts, those which arise from corp­ ses or menstrual blood, those freed by every portion of sacred things, etc. The spirits of the dead and malign genii of every sort are their personified forms. Between these two categories of forces and beings, the contrast is as complete and even goes into the most radical antagonism. The good and the salutary powers It • • • • • • • • • • --220-­ repel to a distance these others which deny and con­ tradict them. Therefore the former are forbidden to the latter. Any contact between them is considered the worst of profanations. This is the typical form of those interdicts between sacred things of differ­ ent species (EF:455-6). Specifically, Durkheim cited the following illustrations of this principle of the multivalence or ambivalence of sacral energies: Women during menstruation, and p.specially at its be­ ginning are impure; so at this moment they are rigor­ oUply sequestered; men have no relations with them. Bull roarers and churingas never come near a dead man. A sacrilegious person is excluded from the society of the faithful; access to the cult is forbidden him. Thus, the whole religious life gravitates about two contrary poles between which there is the same opposi­ tion as between the pure and the impure, the saint and the sacrilegious, the divine and the diabolic (EF: 455-6) . In addition, Durkheim noted how the representations of sa­ cred forces combine the "divine and the diabolic" in the same moral universe. There is no physical or moral ugliness, there are no vices or evils which do not have a special divinity. There are gods of theft and trickery, of lust and war, of sickness and of death. Christianity itself ... has been obliged to give the spirit of evil a place in its mythology. Satan is an essential piece of the Christ­ ian system; even if he is an impure being, he is not a profane one. The anti-god is a god, inferior and sub­ ordinated, it is true, but nevertheless endowed with extended powers; he is even the object of rites, at least of negative ones. Thus religion, far from ignor­ ing the real society and making abstractions of it, is in its image; it reflects all its aspects, even the most vulgar and the most repulsive. All is to be found there, and if in the majority of cases we see the good victorious over the evil, life over death, the powers of light over the powers of darkness, it is because reality is not otherwise. If the relations between these two forces were reversed, life would be impos­ sible; but as a matter of fact, it maintains itself and even tends to develop (EF:468). Now, Durkheim proceeded to complicate the matter even further by noting that instead of a simple dichotomization between these two inverted halves of the religious life, there is actually a close inner relationship. • • • • • • • • • • • • --221-­ But while these two aspects of the religious life op­ pose one another, there is a close kinship between them. In the first place, both have the same relation­ ship towards profane beings: these must abstain from all contact with impure beings, just as from the most holy things. The former are no less forbidden than the latter: they are withdrawn from circulation alike. This shows that they too are sacred. Of course, the senti­ ments inspired by the two are not identical: respect is one thing, disgust and horror another. Yet, if the the gestures are to be the same in both cases, the sen­ timents expressed must not differ in nature. And, in fact, there is a horror of religious respect, especial­ ly when it is very intense, while the fear inspired by malign powers is generally not without a certain rever­ ential character. The shades by which these two atti­ tudes are differentiated are even so slight sometimes that it is not always easy to say which state of mind the believers actually happen to be in. Among certain Semitic peoples, pork was forbidden, but it was not al­ ways known exactly whether this was because it was a pure or an impure thing, and the same may be said of a very large number of alimentary interdictions (EF:456-7). Sometimes this inner kinship between the dangerously sacred and the auspiciously sacred is revealed by the transforma­ tion of one into another through changes in the definition of the situation. But there is more to said; it frequently happens that an impure thing or an evil power becomes a holy thing or a 3uardian power, without changing its nature, through a simple modification of external circumstan­ ces. We have seen how the soul of a dead man, which is a dreadful principle at first, is transformed into a protecting genius as soon as the mourning is finished. Likewise, the corpse, which begins by inspiring terror and aversion, is later regarded as a venerated relic: funeral anthropagy, which is frequently practicied in the Australian societies, is a proof of this transform­ ation. The totemic animal is the pre-eminently sacred being; but for him who eats its flesh upduly, is a case of death (EF:457). Now, since the relationship between the symbol and the structure of a situation may shift, so too may the meaning of its positive or negative sacredness. For example, as we have seen, to partake of the totemic animal, as today to eat the eucharistic host, without the proper preparations and special circumstances, almost necessarily implies sacrilege. Indeed, the passage from sacrilege to sacredness depends I• --222 .... ­ largely upon these inner symbolic transformations. • • • • • • • • • In a general way, the sacrilegious person is merely a profane one who has been infected with a benevolent religious force. This changes its nature in changing its habitat; it defiles rather than sanctifies. The blood issuing from the genital organs of a womalli though it is evidently as impure as that of menstru­ ation, is frequently used as a remedy against sick­ ness. The victim involved in expiatory sacrifices is charged with impurities, for which they have concen­ trated upon it the sins which were to be expiated. Yet, after it has been slaughtered, its flesh and blood are employed for the most pious uses. [Footnote: Among the Hebrews, for example, they sprinkled the al­ tar with the blood of the expiatory victim; they burn­ ed the flesh and used products of this combustion to make water of purification]. On the contrary, though the communion is generally a religious operation whose normal function is to consecrate, it sometimes pro­ duces the effects of a sacrilege. In certain cases, the persons who have communicated are forced to flee from one another as from men infected with a plague. One would say that they have become a source of dan­ gerous contamination for one another: the sacred bond which unites them also separates them (EF:457). Durkheim offers the following cogent summary of his insight into the ambiguity of the sacred: So the pure and the impure are not two separate clas­ ses~ut two-varIeties of the same crass, which 1n­ eTUdes al~acred thingS: There are two sorts of-Sa­ crednes~the propitious and the-unpropitious,-ana­ not only is there no break in-COntinuity between-­ these two-opposed fOrms, bu~also one object may pass from the one to the other-wIthOUt changing-its natUre. The pure ismade out of the impure, and reci­ procally:-It"'1Stil-the ooSSIbTIi~of these tr'anSIDU=" tations that the-amb-rgulty of the sacred consists * (EF: 458) . Finally, Durkheim asks: How is it that the powers of evil have the same intensity and contagiousness as the sacred? Criticizing Robertson Smith's non-acknowledgement of these in­ ner transmutations, Durkheim suggests that the key to these inner transformations may be found in the definitional se­ quence with which they enter into generic sociocultural pro­ cess. While we need not follow, or even accredit, all the twists and turns of his argument, Durkheim was clearly aware that the sequence, what we might even call the musical pat­ • • • • • • • • • • • --223-­ tern (see Levi-Strauss, 1969), of symbolic ritual process is most complex, in which a symbol for one pole may substitute for the other, and the "pure may contaminate while the impure sometimes serves to sanctify" (EF:458). Basically, Durkheim argued from his sociological position that the direction and sequence of religious force may be inverted depending upon the sociocultural circumstances, from something being impureto becoming an instrument of purification . ... the sanctity of a thing is due to the collective sentiment of which it is the object. If, in violation of the interdicts which isolate it, it comes in con­ tact with a profane person, then this same sentiment will spread contagiously to this latter and imprint a special character upon him. But in spreading, it comes into a very different state from the one it was in first. Offended and irritated by the profanation implied in this abusive and unnatural extension, it becomes aggressive and inclined to destructive violen­ ces: it tends to avenge itself for the offense suffer­ ed. Therefore, the infected subject seems to be fil­ led with a mighty and harmful force which menaces all that approaches him; it is as though he were marked with a stain or blemish. Yet the cause of this blem­ ish is the same psychic state which, in other circum­ stances, consecrates and sanctifies. But if the anger thus aroused is satisfied by an expiatory rite, it sub­ sides, alleviated; the offended sentiment is appeased and returns to its original state. So it acts once more as it acted in the beginning; instead of contaminating, it sanctifies. As it continues to infect the object to which it is attached, this could never become profane and religiously indifferent again. But the direction of the religious force with which it seems to be filled is inverted: from being impure, it has become pure and and instrument of purification (EF:460). We should not be surprised that, in the final analysis, Durk­ heim correlated these two different faces of the sacred with two different aspects of collective well-being and disharmony . ... the two poles of the religious life correspond to the two opposed states through which all social life p~s~es. Between the propitiously sacred and the unpro­ p1t10usly sacred there is the same contrast as between the states of collective well-being and ill-being. But since both are equally collective, there-rB, between the mythological constructions symbolizing them, an in­ timate kinship of nature. The sentiments held in common vary from extreme dejection to extreme joy, from pain­ ful irritation to ecstatic enthusiasm; but, in any case, • • • • • • • • • • • --224-­ there is a communion of minds and a mutual comfort resulting from this communion. The fundamental pro­ cess is always the same; only the circumstances col­ or it differently. So, at bottom, it is the unity and the diversity of social life which make the simultan­ eous unity and diversity of sacred beings and things* (EF: 460) . Let us now finally turn to consider the last stage of gener­ ic symbolic process--namely, the reunification of the com­ pounding series of polarities through ritual transformation of opposites into a new and vital synthesis--in terms of Durkheim's description of oblation and totemic commensal sacrifice. d. The Positive Cult: Oblation and Sacrificial Communion The final phase of generic symbolic process generally centers on rituals which reconcile opposites, which transform diversity into unity, which restore harmony and wholeness to divided and suffering consciences and consciousnesses. Release and liberation from negative being is achieved through the symbolic mechanism of victimage, which leads to collective reunion. These symbolic transformations often center around mythic or ancestral commemorations, re9resentations of ideal models of perfection and aspiration, oblations and sacrifi­ cial offerings, and a kind of sacred commensality which sig­ nifies some basic kind of consubstantiality. Durkheim noted: In the form which it takes when fully constituted, a sacrifice is composed of two essential elements: an act of communion and an act of oblation. The wor­ shipper communes with his god by taking in a sacred food, and at the same time he makes an offering to his god (EF:384). Now, as we have seen, ascetic separation is always the prelude to mystical reunion, for these are best viewed as sirn­ ply two basic phases of the same overall symbolic process. Negative or ascetic rites have always served to separate, to prepare the moral subject for the coming metamorphosis. As such, they signify the acknowledgement of guilt, of separa­ tion, of privation, which intensifies the tension between the • • • • • • • • • • • • --225-­ two poles of life, and thus, which helps propel the to-be reborn subject forward. Without the positive pole, there is no goal, no viable purpose or meaning to the trials of as­ cetic preparation. This is precisely the cause of the spiri­ tual void so deeply felt in all cultures touched today by ascetic Protestantism. We are left hanging in moral space, 'I' . 1 ' alone, has t h e goa1 d rops out and Utlltarlan oglcsAremaln. T ese are truly post-traditional cultures, "beyond belief," beyond hope. But Durkheim clearly noted: If it (the negative cult) orders the worshipper to flee from the profane world, it is to bring him near­ er to the sacred world. Men have never thought that their duties toward religious forces might have been reduced to a simple abstinence from all commerce: they have always believed that they upheld positive and bilateral relations with them (EF:366). Further, the shedding of the old self is a prerequisite to rebirth. Combining these factors, as Kenneth Burke has ob­ served, we see that the "principle of perfection" (akin to the self-equilibrativeness presumed by structuralists) inher­ ent in symbolic systems necessitates a sacrificial victim on which to displace the collectively incurred guilt. As Burke proposes (eg.1966, 1970, 1973), victimage is expiatory; Christianity, of course, has developed this generic neces­ sity to the highest degree with the representation of Christ as the "Perfect Victim." Burke says: "If action is to be our key term, then drama, if drama, then conflict, if conflict, then victimage" (1966:545). In other words, the collective release provided by sacrificial victimage generally serves as a prelude to some renewed form of communion and freedom. In its essential form this is the dramatic or dialectical structure of human symbolic action. Now, it is precisely the mediatory function of the sacrificial oblation as a bridge between separated spheres of being which is the final prerequisite for the transforma­ tion of the profane into the sacred. Sacrificial victimage is the vehicle for the extension of the moral bond. For exam­ ple, after reviewing various ceremonies of the Australian • • • • • • • • • • --226-­ aborigines such as scattering of a certain type of sacred dust, of letting blood flow from the veins directly onto sa­ cred sites, and so forth, Durkheim noted the importance of these oblations or sacrificial offerings to the sacred forces: The interest of this system of rites lies in the fact that in them we find, in the most elementary form act­ ually known, all the essential principles of a great religious institution which was destined to become one of the foundation stones of the positive cult in the superior religions: this is the institution of sacri­ f i ce (EF: 3 7 7) . Indeed, we know what importance the Durkheimians placed upon the institution of sacrifice by Hubert and Mauss's great mono­ graph on the subject (1964). Here, Durkheim again paid homage to what he called Ro­ bertson Smith's revolution in understanding the nature of sac­ rifice (see however Evans-Pritchard, 1965). Throughout The Elementarv Forms Durkheim kept up a running conversation, partly laudatory and partly critical, with Smith's work. We know what a revolution the work of Robertson Smith brought about in the traditional theory of sacrifice. Before him, sacrifice was regarded as a sort of tri­ bute or homage, either obligatory or optional, analo­ gous to that which subjects owe to their princes. Ro­ bertson Smith was the first to remark that this clas­ sic explanation did not account for two essential char­ acteristics of the rite. In the first place, it is a repast: its substance is food. Secondly, it is a re­ past in which the worshippers who offer it take part, along with the god to whom it is offered. Certain parts of the victim are reserved for the divinity~ others are attributed to the sacrificers, who consume them•..• Now, in a multitude of societies, meals taken in com­ mon are believed to create a bond of artificial kin­ ship betwen those who assist at them. In fact, rela­ tives are people who are naturally made of the same flesh and blood. But food is constantly remaking the substance of the organism. So a common food may pro­ duce the same effects as a common origin. Acccording to Smith, sacrificial banquets have the object of ma­ king the worshipper and his god communicate in the same flesh, in order to form a bond of kinship between them. From this point of view, sacrifice takes on a wholly new aspect. Its essential element is no longer the act of renouncement which the word sacrifice or­ dinarily expresses: before all, it is an act of ali­ mentary communion (EF:377-78). • • • • • • • • • • • • --227-­ But Durkheim, proceeding to criticize Smith on various points, suggested that, for example, the oblations Australian abori­ gines offered up were part of the complex symbolic web of re­ ciprocity which serve to bond together tribes and their gods. The seasonal cycle of death and rebirth of flora and fauna corresponded to a moral cycle of a crisis of confidence and rebirth of hope in men in the viability of the relationship between gods and men • ... Vegetaion dies every year: will it be reborn? Animal species tend to become extinguished by the effect of natural and violent death: will they be renewed at such a time, and in such a way as is proper? Above all, the rain is capricious: there are long periods during which it seems to have dis­ appeared forever. These periodical variations of na­ ture bear witness to the fact that at the the cor­ responding periods, the sacred beings upon whom the plants, animals, rain, etc. depend are themselves passing through grave crisis: so the~ too, have their periods of giving way. But men could not re­ gard these spectacles as indifferent spectators. If he is to live, the universal life must continue, and consequently the gods must not die. So he seeks to sustain and aid them: for this, he puts at their service whatever forces he has at his disposition, and mobilizes them for this purpose. The blood flow­ ing in his veins has fecundating virtues; he pours it forth. From the sacred rocks possessed by his clans he takes those germs of life which lie dormant there, and scatters them into space. In a word, he makes oblations. The external and physical crises, moreover, duplicate internal and mental crises which tend toward the same result. Sacred beings exist only when they are represented as such in the mind. When we cease to believe in them, it is as though they did not exist (EF:386). Pursuing the argument with Smith, Durkheim argued that the reciprocity implied in the continued viability of both gods and human culture demanded that men reverse the flow of energy, and periodically return some of the sacred sub­ stance back to the original source from which it was first received. To clarify this reverse flow of energy, Durkheim suggested: Let us return to the first act of the Intichuma, to the rites destined to assure the fecundity of the ani­ mal or vegetable species which serves the clan as totem. • --228-­ • • • • • • • • • • This species is the preeminently sacred thing; in it is incarnated that we have been able to call, by meta­ phor, the totemic divinity. Yet we have seen that to perpetuate itself it has the need of the aid of men. It is they who disperse the life of the new generation each year; without them, it would never be born. If they stopped celebrating the Intichuma, the sacred be­ ings would disappear from the face of the earth. So in one sense, it is from men that they get their existence; yet in another way, it is from them that lnen get theirs, for after they have once arrived at maturity, it is from them that men acquire the force needed to support and re­ pair their spiritual beings. Thus, we are able to say that men make their gods, or, at least, make them live; but at the same time, it is from them that they live themselves. So they are regularly guilty of the circle which, according to Smith, is implied in the very idea of a sacrificial tribute: they give to the sacred beings a little of what they receive from them, and they re­ ceive from them all that they give (EF:38~-3). Indeed, so necessary and universal is this generic inner re­ ciprocal relationship between constitutive collective symbols and group processes that Durkheim insists that oblation is not a late product of civilization, but an original and con­ tinuing generic necessity. If the sacrificer immolates an animal, it is in order that the living principles within it may be disengaged from the organism and go to nourish the divinity. Like­ wise, the grains of dust which the Australian detaches from the sacred rock are so many sacred principles which he scatters into space, so that they may go to animate the totemic species and assure its renewal. The gesture with which this scattering is made is also that which normally accompanies offerings •..• We have seen that in order to have rain the Kaitish pour water over the altar, with the same end in view. The effusions of blood which are usual in a certain number of Intichuma are veritable oblations. Just as the Arunta or Dieri sprink­ le the sacred rock or the totemic design with blood, so it frequently happens that in the more advanced cults, the blood of the sacrificed victim or of the worshipper himself is spilt before or upon the altar. In these ca­ ses, it is given to the gods, of whom it is the prefer­ red food; in Australia, it is given to the sacred spe­ cies (EF:383). Finally, let us turn our attention to commensal commun­ ion. Released from profane or negative status through the mediation of the oblation, the worshippers then turn to cele­ brate their deliverance by replenishing their sacred energies. --- ~------- --- • • • • • • • • • • • --229-­ By partaking of the sacred totem, they are mystically trans­ formed into a common flesh and spirit. Commensal celebration creates a new moral bond; spiritual forces are renewed. The cycle which we entered many pages ago is now completed . ... a whole series of prelimiary operatiQns, lustra­ tions, unctions, prayers, etc., transform the animal to be immolated into a sacred thing, whose sacredness is subsequently transferred to the worshipper who eats it .... The alimentary communion is one of the essential elements of the sacrifice .... After the totemic animal has been killed, the Alatunja and the old men solemly eat it. So they communicate with the sacred principle residing in it and they assimilate it. The only differ­ ence we find here is that the animal is naturally sa­ cred while it ordinarily acquires this character arti­ ficially in the course of the sacrifice. Moreover, the object of this communion is manifest. Every member of a totemic clan contains a mystic substance within him which is the preeminent part of his being, for his soul is made out of it. From it carne whatever powers he has and his social position, for it is this which makes him a person. So he has a vital interest in maintaining it intact, and in keeping it, as far as possible, in a state of perpetual youth. Unfortunately, all forces, even the most spiritual, are used up in the course of time if nothing comes to return to them the energy they lose through the normal working of things; there is a necessity of the first importance here which ... is the real reason for the positive cult. Therefore, the men of the totem cannot retainthpirposition unless they periodically revivify the totemic principle which is in them; and as they represent this principle in the form of a vegetable or animal, it is to the correspond­ ing animal or vegetable species that they go to demand the supplementary forces needed to renew this and reju­ ventate it (EF:378-9). The civil status and personhood are reaffirmed in the re­ creation of the moral subject through commensal celebration. And, as we saw before, the rule governing such mystical re­ unification is "the part is equal to the whole." A man of the Kangaroo clan believes himself and feels himself a kangaroo; is by this quality that he defines himself; it is this which marks his place in the socie­ ty. In order to keep it, he takes a little of the flesh of this same animal into his own body from time to time. A small bit is enough, owing to the rule: the part is equal to the whole (EF:379). The cycle of rebirth completed, let us now rest. • --230-­ • CHAPTER FIVE • THE EVOLUTIONARY TREE OF SOCIOCULTURAL LIFE The succession of societies cannot be represented as in a single plane; it resembles, rather, a tree with branches extending in diverging directions (R:19). • The notion which provided orientation was Durkheim's guiding metaphor of a tree of social life. This meta­ phor served as a logical axis for the classification of forms of human experience and entire social systems. The trunk of the tree corresponded to the invariant conditions of social and cultural life, while the bran­ • ches represented different types of society (LaCapra, 1972:12) • Preface. True to the nineteenth century tradition of thought, Durkheim always married evolutionary perspectives with his so­ • ciological framework. Biological and evolutionary metaphors were "in the air," and found a ready adherent in the positiv­ ist Durkheim. Surely one of his key subterranean metaphors was the "tree of social life." As Giddens (197la,b,c, 1972a,b) • Lukes (1973), Nisbet (1974), and Hinkle (1976), among others, have pointed out, evolutionism permeated all of Durkheim's works. Lukes remarks that "It is interesting to note that Spen­ cer also often used the analogy of a tree to symbolize evolu­ • tion" (1973:150,#49). Whether it be Durkheim's sociology of re­ ligion, knowledge, morality, law, etc., all his special studies were articulated within a genetic and evolutionary framework. Indeed, consideration of the progressive changes from primitive • to modern societies constituted both the departure and arri­ val points of Durkheim's sociology. It is importa~to emphasize and explore the crucial role played by evolutionary images in his sociological system, for Durkheim is still unfortunately • portrayed as an abstracted, ahistorical theorist searching for the generic bases of social order and control. Careful analy­ sis of Durkheim's embrace of evolutionary thinking reveals the • • --231-­ need to distinguish between the following related, but sep­ arable, elements: his metaphor of the tree of sociocultural • life, his genetic approach and the importance of the primi­ tive sacral complex as the evolutionary womb of society and culture, his methodological notion of a scale of progressive evolutionary types, and his perceptions of general evolution­ • ary processes seen, for example, in the "progressive division of labor," the emergence of abstract, monotheistic religions, and the growth of rational, universalizable thought. Here we shall consider simply the substantive importance of Durkheim's • key evolutionary metaphor of the tree of sociocultural life. As with most great thinkers, Durkheim's preoccupation with progressive changes, especially on the world-historical level, stemmed from deep concern and erudite reflection on • the basic forces transforming the society of his own day. In­ • deed, as Durkheim himself indicated (eg. see "Les Principes de 1789 et la sociologie," 1900, translated by Tiryakian, 1971, and also in Bellah, 1973), one fruitful way of interpreting the historical significance of his positivist sociology of "moral facts" was as an attempt to institutionalize the cen­ tral values of the French Revolution. For decades after this still-unresolved tempest, the contending forces continued their • bitter national frat1cidal quarrels; foremost here were ques­ tions of the legitimate grounds of moral authority. Durkheim's systematic study of the evolution of moral facts, and its ul­ timate pay-off--a positivist or "scientific" morality--served • as a powerful intellectual tool justifying the still-to-be in­ • stitutionalized ideas of the French Revolution and the Franco­ Latin "Laic" Positivist Cultural Tradition. From his own spe­ cial world-historical perspective, Durkheim legitimized this emerging morality as historically necessary. In short, Durk­ heim's life-work can be viewed as a profound attempt to con­ struct new bases of argument demonstrating the significance • and validity of these basic changes, and the emerging Positi­ vist morality. I submit, therefore, that Durkheim was always centrally • • • • • • • • • • • --232-­ concerned with societal, cultural, and personal evolution. The transition from simple to complex societies, and the in­ dividual's changing position within that great historical transformation, constituted one of the central axes of Durk­ heim's thought. As Benjamin Nelson (1969b,1972a) along with Giddens, has rightly insisted, Durkheim's sociological out­ look was always "processual" through and through; that is, he was centrally concerned with the prime constitutive and trans formative processes involved in basic world-historical transformations, especially those on the road to modernity. It is significant that Durkheim and Weber's macro-level con­ cerns converged on this point, for evolutionary thinking was deeply embedded in their work. Yet, the widely pervasive image of Durkheim as a "sta­ tic" thinker remains strong today. Why? An eye for irony would help here, for the simple truth of the matter is this: he who first helped rescue Durkheim also distorted his doctrine in the very same process! I refer, of course, to Talcott Parsons in his magisterial The Structure of Social Action. Recogni­ tion of Parsons' enormous influence in this regard is a pre­ requisite to understanding the curious fate of Durkheim's doctrine in American sociology (see especially R. Hinkle,1960). While Parsons must be granted his full due for the originality and profundity of his heroic rescue of Durkheim from the igno­ minious clutches of the radical empiricists and reductionists, nonetheless, Parsons must also assume responsibility for let­ ting his own drarr~ shunt aside the real underlying evolution­ ary structure of Durkheim's system. Perhaps one of the first keys to Parsons simultaneous "rescue" and subsequent distor­ tion emerges from the famous assertion early in his treatment of Durkheim in The Structure of Social Action: "Durkheim was almost wholly concerned with ... "social statics." The prob­ lem of order is Durkheim's central problem from an early stage." (1949:307). Although he admitted that Durkheim's first major work, The Division of Labor in Society, was "ostensibly a study of social differentiation," Parsons largely ignored his crucial evolutionary matrix. In addition, Parsons generally • • --233-­ devalued the importance of The Division of Labor in Durkheim's intellectual development; he especially slighted Durkheim's • theoretical insistence on the important role played by social morphological changes underlying societal differentiation. Parsons suggested that these factors merely represented "dead­ ends" in Durkheim's theoretical development. Similarly, Par­ • sons largely ignored Durkheim's crucial underlying evolution­ ary perspective in his works dealing with the development of religion, morality, law, logical thought, science, the family, and so on. Parsons persisted throughout his discussion of the • rest of Durkheim's sociological work in portraying him as he would have liked him to be--namely, an abstracted, static theo­ rist, perplexed by the so-called "Hobbesian dilemma " and searching, as Parsons himself did, for the generic bases of so­ • cial order and control. I must insist, however, that real pro­ gress in understanding the potential significance of Durkheim's work for the human sciences cannot come until this wholly mis­ leading image of Durkheim is finally set aside. • Recently, some perceptive observers have begun to raise serious questions concerning the Parsonian orthodoxy on Durk­ heim's supposed aversion to change and historical thinking. Anthony Giddens, for example, has pointedly and repeatedly • criticized Parsons on precisely this matter. Far from the "problem of order" having been "Durkheim's central problem from an early stage," it can perfectly well be said that it was not a problem for Durkheim at all. The central issue informing his writings was that • of change ••• he was preoccupied with the confrontation between the dissolving "traditional" and the emergent "modern" type (19 72a : 4l) • Even the oblique refutation of Parsonian orthodoxy by one of his own proteges, I mean Robert Bellah in his excellent arti­ • cle "Durkheim and History" (1959), has not overcome the popu­ lar misportrayal of Durkheim as a static, abstracted theorist. Nor has Parsons himself, even in his recent turn toward evo­ lutionary theory, yet given Durkheim his just due as one of • the great world-historical thinkers. And although Parsons re­ centlyadmitted (1973:l57), in an isolated comment, that Durk­ • • --234-­ heim must, indeed, he considered an evolutionary thinker, he has as yet done little to restore Durkheim's name to the first • rank of world-historical thinkers, along with Weber and other pioneers of modern social science. A. The Tree of Sociocultural Life as a Metaphor of Multilineal • Evolution As we shall soon discover, one of the major underlying reasons why Durkheim formulated this metaphor was to absolve himself of the typical charges against the simple unilinear, • progressive evolutionary schemas characteristic of many nine­ teenth century thinkers. For example, Durkheim repeatedly criti­ cized Comte for treating the progressive evolution of "mankind­ in-general" as the subject matter of sociology (see especially • The Rules of Sociological Method). Indeed, one of Durkheim's reasons behind his embrace of the metaphor of the evolutionary tree of sociocultural life was to graphically portray the po­ tentially manifold lines take in societal evolution. The grow­ • th of differentiated complexity was never simple nor uniform; therefore, the image of the tree of social life was meant to convey recognition of progressive as well as static or regres­ sive evolutionary lines, and as we shall soon see, of evolu­ • tionary survivals as well as the leading edge of progressive evolution. As always, the philosopher in Durkheim sought to reconcile historical diversity with generic unity. Durkheim's image of the manifold lines taken by general evolutionary pro­ • cesses needs to be emphasized, I repeat, for, on the contrary, even among those who grudgingly recognize Durkheim's evolution­ ism, many persist in portraying him as a rather typical, uni­ linear social evolutionist. While Durkheim took over the evo­ • lutionism of the nineteenth century--the very leit-motif of the time--he did so critically; and thus he must be ranked, albeit tardily, as one of the pioneers of multilineal evolu­ tionary theory. • Although most readers, if not too deeply under Parsons lingering spell, now recognize the crucial role of genetic­ • • • • • • • • • • • --235-­ evolutionary perspectives in Durkheim's work, until recently one of his guiding metaphors remained submerged, largely hid­ den from public view. Among the few secondary interpreters who must be given credit for having recognized the existence of Durkheim's metaphor (ego Alpert, 1939:197; J.A. Barnes, 1966:161; Wallwork, 1972:42; Lukes, 1973:149-50, 281 #27), most neglected to develop its general significance within Durkheim's system. In view of the typical ironies involved in the "routinization of charisma-on-deposit" {McCloskey, 1974), it is not surprising that one of the first observers to move the metaphor of the tree of social life to center stage of Durkheim's system is both young and a relative outsider to the field of sociology. Given, however, his background as a historian, it is perhaps understandable that Dominick LaCapra has been the first, so far as I know, to repeatedly emphasize the potency of Durkheim's evolutionary metaphor within his doctrine. The notion which provided orientation was Durkheim's guiding metaphor of a tree of social life. This meta­ phor served as a logical axis for the classification of forms of human experience and entire social systems. The trunk of the tree corresponded to the invariant conditions of social and cultural life, while the bran­ ches represented different types of society (1972:12). LaCapra rightly emphasizes that Durkheim's metaphor combined, in one and the same image, both evolutionary continuity (the roots and the trunk), and discontinuity and diversity (the branches and fruits). LaCapra suggests the derivation of these notions in this manner: In his guiding model of the tree of sociocultural life, Durkheim combined a flexible theory of invariance with a notion of different "social species" or types. His conception of the common trunk and its relation to ar­ chaic societies owed much to Rousseau. His idea of ty­ pological branches and its relation to history derived in large part from Saint-Simon (1972:195). Now, perhaps one of the main reasons why so many obser­ vers have had difficulty spotting this seminal metaphor in Durkheim's sociological system is due to its very ubiquitous­ ness. For while Durkheim explicitly formulated it, its perva­ • • --236-­ sive influence can be seen almost everywhere beneath the sur­ face. The almost wholly implicit status of a key image, meta­ • phor, or assumption is certainly not unusual; often it is the rule rather than the exception. Many people feel no need to spell out what they take to be obvious, and, of course, as philosophers have often remarked, this is precisely the prob­ • lem. Indeed, much of the potency of subterranean metaphors in linking diverse phenomena would be lost if they were constant­ ly subjected to conscious and critical review. Whether speci­ fically correct or not, it is precisely this implicit connota­ • tional load or metaphorical "penumbra" which often extends our imagination, and leads us in new directions and to crucial in­ sights (see especially N.R. Campbell, 1920; N.R. Hanson, 1958; M. Hesse, 1963; T.S. Kuhn, 1970). • However, at certain points Durkheim's guiding metaphor did indeed surface to meet the reflective light of day. One of the earliest statements can be found, appropriately enough, in Durkheim's "Cours de science sociale: Lecon d'overture" • published in the Revue Internationale de ~'enseignement in 1883. Noting that Durkheim rejected the conceFtion of unilinear evolution implied in Comte's famous law of the three stages, LaCapra provides the following translation: • Whatever Pascal may have said--and Comte mistakenly took up his celebrated formula--mankind cannot be compared to a man who, having lived through all past centuries, still subsists. Rather, humanity resembles an immense family whose different branches, which have • increasingly diverged from one another, have become little by little detached from the common trunk to • live their own lives. Besides, what assurance is there that this common trunk ever existed (1972:l95)? Again, in an important footnote halfway through his most ex­ plicitly evolutionary book, The Division of Labor, Durkheim characteristically reflects: • In speaking of one social type as being more advanced than another, we do not mean to suggest that the dif­ ferent social types are stages in one and the same as­ cending linear series, more or less elevated according to their historical places. It is, rather, certain that, if the genealogical table of social types could be com­ pletely drawn up, it would resemble a tufted tree, with • • --237-­ • • • • • • • • • a single trunk, to be sure, but with diverging bran­ ches. However, in spite of this tendency, the dis­ tance between the two types is measurable; they are higher or lower. Surely we have the right to say of a type that it is above another when it began with the form of the latter and yet has gone above it. ~ch is certainly the case with a more elevated bran­ ch or bough (DL:14l-2, #21). Indeed, close scrutiny of this passage reveals that Durkheim took the time to explicitly state his subterranean metaphor in order to absolve himself of unfounded charges of "unilin­ eal evolution. II The explanations Durkheim himself offered for this metaphor reveals that his intention behind this image was not merely to indicate evolution, but to portray progres­ sive evolution in terms of a multilineal matrix, including regressive as well as leading lines. The same image, repeated in Durkheim's neglected arti­ cle IITwo Laws of Penal Evolution ll (1901; see Tiryakian, 1964, and Jones and Scull, 1973), makes it clear that the metaphor of the tree of sociocultural life was intended to combine, in one root image, both evolutionary continuity and discontinuity. It is relatively easy to determine whether one social type is more or less advanced than another: one has only to see whether they are more or less complex, and as to the extent of similar composition, whether they are more or less organized. This hierarchy of social types, moreover, does not imply that the succession of societies takes on a unilinear form; on the contrary, it is certain that the sequence must rather be thought of as a tree with many branches all diverging in great­ er or lesser degree. But, on this tree, societies are found at differing heights, and are found at differing distances from the common trunk. It is on this condi­ tion that one looks at it in this way that one may talk in terms of a general evolution of societies (Jones & Scull, 1973:285-6). In contrast to the simple varities abounding in his own day, Durkheim's own evolutionary perspective was more subtle and multilineal at its very heart. For although the tree of social life can have only one trunk, it has many branches reaching in different directions, and perhaps even incomparable fruits, issuing from many cross-fertilizations and unique graftings. Thus did Durkheim seek to reconcile historical diversity and essential sociocultural unity • • • • • • • • • • • • • --238-­ B. Multilineal Evolution, SocioCultural Sedimentation, and Evolutionary Survivals All historical explanations must struggle with the problem of assigning ratios to evolutionary continuity and discontinuity. In terms of this basic problem, Durkheim's key metaphor of the tree of social life carried two different, though related, meanings. The first and most explicit conno­ tation, the genetic evolutionary sense of the metaphor, con­ veyed the image of a progressive mainline of societal evolu­ tion. The second and more implicit connotation conjured up the image of different evolutionary strata layered and sedi­ mented together ina new working sociocultural complex. The first sense of Durkheim's metaphor focussed attention on the macro-level, on the leading edge of evolutionary progress, while the second sense reminds us, on the micro-societal le­ vel, of the continuing role played in contemporary society by certain sociocultural survivals held over from earlier periods and types. Thus, the duality of his metaphor implied that societal evolution could be compared to the tree of so­ cial life in a number of senses, for not only are contempor­ ary societies based upon the progressive achievements of the present in overcoming the past, but some of the past contin­ ues to live on underneath the present. Put another way, Durkheim's metaphor conveyed the dual sense of evolutionary stages and types on the one hand, and evolutionary survivals on the other. The first implies direct continuity with by-gone days. Yet both meanings, simultaneous­ ly opposed and related, were bound up with Durkheim's same guiding metaphor of the evolutionary tree of sociocultural life. Since this dual aspect of Durkheim's evolutionary thinking has been little noted, let us now briefly explore this fruitful ambiguity, especially in regard to the second sense of sur­ vivals or evolutionary holdovers from primitive or archaic so­ cieties once thought to be wholly passed over by the leading edge of progressive evolution. • • • • • • • • • • .... -239-­ Now, one finds references to various sorts of hist­ orical holdovers scattered throughout Durkheim's work. For example, in The Elementary Forms, Durkheim spoke of folklore as " ... the debris of passed religions, unorganized survivals" and offers the examples of " .•. celebrations of May Day, the summer solstice or the carnival, beliefs relative to genii, local demons, etc. II (EF:5l; see also 57). Moreover, Durkheim observed that certain traces of primitive totemism can be dis­ covered even in the modern world. Though no visible traces of collective totemism remain in civilized countries, the idea that there is a con­ nection between each individual and some animal, plant, or other object, is at the bottom of many customs still observable in many European societies. (Footnote: Thus at the birth of a child, a tree is planted which is cared for piously; for it is believed that its fate and the child's are united) (EF:19l). Further, in Primitive Classification, at the very end, Durk­ heim and Mauss insist that the primitive sacral foundations of logical thought continue to this very day. But¥is not the case that these remote influences which we have just studied have ceased to be felt today. They have left behind them an effect which survives and which is always present; it is the very cadre of all classification, it is the ensem­ ble of mental habits by virtue of which we conceive things and facts in the form of coordinated or hier­ archized groups (PC:88). Now, although some who persist in viewing Durkheim only as a anti-traditionalist positivist might think it strange, those who wish to grasp the full complexity and profundity of Durkheim's thought will not be surprised to discover that he suggested that it is well that " ••. the past persists beneath the surface of the present, even when they are at variance" (PECM:174). Although he stood for the future against the "re­ pressiveness" of the past, nonetheless, Durkheim realistically recognized that the present, past, and future cannot always stand at war. Indeed, in contrast to those who railed against the historical indecency of "irrational survivals," Durkheim counseled: "Every social structure is full of these paradoxes" (PECM:174). So strong was this seemingly paradoxical convict­ • • --240-­ • • • • • • • • • ion, that Durkheim proposed at the end of his profound lec­ tures "Physique des moeurs et du droit" that "Old institu­ tions never disappear entirely; they only pass into the back­ ground and fade away by degrees" (PECM: 21 7) • Durkheim evaluated the continuing importance of evolu­ tionary survivals in a number of different ways--those that are non-functional or functional only as a transition from old to new structures, and those that become functional in certain ways because they become traditional. It is difficult, of course, to discriminate among these various shades and grades of continuing functional importance; further, it must be noted that other sedimented modes of survival and trans­ formation are possible than those explicated here. In the first sense, and perhaps the most predictable way as a positivist interested in overcoming the tenacious clutches of the past, Durkheim insisted that certain sociocultural traits lingering on from earlier societies no longer were appropriate to the changed structures of modern societies. Several types of exam­ ples could be offered, but Durkheim's critique of the legal institution of inheritance is representative: We have seen that inheritance ab intestat, a survival of the old right of family joint ownership, is today an archaic survival and without justification. It no longer corresponds to anything in our ethics, and could be abolished without disturbing the moral structure of our societies in any way (PECM:216). Now, it was precisely these difficult distinctions between so­ ciocultural forms that are to be judged as "archaic survivals" no longer corresponding to the present or emerging structure of modern societies, from those elements that are judged as still functional that underlies Durkheim's positivist attempt to build a new morality in terms of systematic evolutionary distinctions between "normal" and "pathological" social pheno­ mena. Indeed, it is a common refrain in Durkheim, especially as he argued against traditionalists, that it is vain and use­ less to attempt to resurrect or preserve the past beyond its appointed hour. Nonetheless, it is the same Durkheim who next argued, • • • • • • • • • • • --241-­ in an almost imperceptible shift, that evolutionary survivals may serve an important transitional function in the progressive move from the old to new structures. For example, Durkheim's image of the tree of sociocultural life led him, in terms of his genetic investigations into the primitive roots of the le­ gal notion of property, to conclude that its communal origins continue in various forms even today: "Since communal proper­ ty is the stock from which the other forms sprang, we find tra­ ces of it in their structure as a whole" (PECM:168). Now, al­ though this image of survivals from earlier times led Durkheim to dec:are that these continuities with the communal origin of property (eg. in legal inheritance) are archaic and do not fit the contemporary social structure and individualist achievement ethos of modern society, nevertheless, he also suggested that these earlier forms served as important transitional links be­ tween one notion of property and its successor. Inheritance is therefore bound up with archaic concepts and practices that have no part in our present-day eth­ ics. It is true that this fact alone does not warrant our thinking it is bound to disappear. We sometimes have to keep such survivals, where they are needed. The past persists beneath the present, even when they are at variance. Every social structure is full of these paradoxes. We can do nothing to cancel what has been-­ the past is a reality and not to be done away with. The earliest forms of society have provided a foundatkn for the most recent: it often occurs that a continuity of some sort has been kept up whereby the older forms in part are preserved to nourish the newer (PECM:174-5). Here we see Durkheim employing both senses of his metaphor, for such survivals, though "archaic" remnants of the past, not only played an important transitional role, but also because the past lives on in attenuated form "beneath the surface of the present." Durkheim concluded, in regard to the same ques­ tion of the proper role of the continuity of the communal ba­ sis of property, that: The old institutions never disappear entirely; they only pass into the background, and fade away or de­ grees. This one has played too great a role in his­ tory for it to be conceivable that nothingof it should survive. It would only survive, however, in a weakened form (PECM:2l7). • • • • • • • • • • • --242-­ Indeed, Durkheim's passion for paradox, surpassed per­ haps only by Weber, led him, again and again, to insist that "life is made of contradictions," that we cannot wholly extir­ pate the past, just as the future cannot be seized immediately. For example, in relation to the question of the continuation of the altruistic type of morality appropriate to primitive social solidarity in the isolated modern structural context of the army, Durkheim observed: ... the suicide of lower societies, in survival among us because the military morality itself is in certain respects a survival of primitive morality. (Footnote: ... which does not mean that it is destined to disap­ pear forthwith. These survivals have their own bases for existence, and it is natural for some of the past to remain in the midst of the present. Life is made of these contradictions) (S:238). Finally, Durkheim explored, in passing, the other main possibility that certain historical holdovers, because of their traditional status, continue to playa role of certain signi­ ficance in maintaining contemporary sociocultural equilibrium. Durkheim cited, for example, the survival of certain food ta­ boos, dating back at least to the Pentateuch, among the strict adherents of Judaic Law. Such religious interdictions, having lost much or all of their original reason for being, come to be identifiecf!ttWe Judaic religion as a special "way of life." Though of primitive tribal totemistic origin, yet, Durkheim noted, "it becomes necessary that they persist, in spite of their irrationality." Just as the individual type, the collective type is formed from very diverse causes and even from fortui­ tous combinations. Produced through historical devel­ opment, it carries the work of circumstances of every kind which society has gone through in its history. It would be miraculous, then, if everything there were adjusted to some useful end •••. There are some of them remaining without any use, and those whose services are most incontestable often have an intensity which has no relation to their utility, because it comes to them, in part, from other causes. The case is the same with col­ lective passions. All the acts which offend them are not dangerous in themselves, or, at least, are not as they are made out to be. But, the reprobation of which these acts are the object still has reason for exist­ ing, whatever the origins of the sentiments involved, once they are made of a collective type, and especial­ • • --243-­ • • • • • • • • ly if they are essential elements, everything which contributes to disturb them, at the same time dis­ turbs social cohesion and compromises society. It was not at all useful for them to be born, but once they have endured, it becomes necessary that they persist in spite of their irrationality ...• Of cour­ se, reasoning in the abstract, we may well show that there is no reason for a society to forbid the eat­ ing of such and such a meat, in itself offensive. But once the horror of this has become an integral part of the common conscience, it cannot disappear without a social link being broken, and this is what sane consciences obscurely feel (DL:I06-7). Besides describing the processes of sedimentation of old and new cultural elements into a new working sociocultural complex, Durkheim's profound observations make it clear that such vital links with the past, though changed from their original func­ tion, take on new integrative significance as symbolizing the very identity of the group itself; that is, they become true "collective representations." This can only happen because so­ cial and cultural life is historically constructed and sedimen­ ted. In sum, Durkheim's image of the growth and decline of various types of social life is really rather complex--old elements that no longer correspond to current necessities can and must give way, new elements constantly emerge; yet in the process older elements may change in their prime functions and gradually take on wholly different and perhaps even more import­ ant roles in the continuation and extension of the inherited and constantly reconstructed sociocultural complex. As might be expected, however, lest Durkheim the posi­ tivist find his larger intentions misrepresented by his real­ istic attitudes toward historical complexities, he took pains to absolve himself in the following footnote of potential mis­ casting as a conservative or closet traditionalist. That does not mean that it is necessary to conserve a penal rule because, at some given moment, it corres­ ponded to some collective sentiment. It has a raison d'etre only if this latter is living and energetic. If~as disappeared or been enfeebled, nothing is vainer or worse than trying to keep it alive artifi­ cially, or by force. It can even be that it was ne­ cessary to combat a practice which was common, but is no longer so, and opposes the establishment of new • • --244-­ and necessary practices. But we need not enter into • this casuitical problem (DL:I07-8, #45). • But Durkheim's rhetorical device here of dismissing potential inconsistencies in his own doctrine as mere "casuitical prob­ lems" will not suffice. For it is precisely these ticklish dilemmas which generate so much of Durkheim's troubles in at­ tempting to systematically distinguish between "normalities" and "pathologies" in relation to a series of evolutionary types. Indeed, it is no accident that LaCapra's attention • was usurped by these implications, since he always added "normality" and "pathology" as the companion keys, along with the metaphor of the tree of sociocultural life, to comprehending the foundations of Durkheim's sociology. • But, in any case, whatever the problems Durkheim genera­ ted for himself in other parts of his system, it should be remembered that they came from a profound thinker's wrest­ lings with the eternal problems of historical diversity and • generic unity. That Durkheim could so intimately intertwine past and present, progressive and evolutionary lines, histor­ ical holdovers and contemporary changes, in short, unity and diversity, in one potent and resonating image of the evolu­ • tionary tree of sociocultural life, is added testimony to his dialectical genius. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • --245-­ CHAPTER SIX THE PRIMITIVE SACRAL COMPLEX: WOMB OF SOCIETY AND CULTURE [In the beginning] religion comprises all, extends to all. It contains in a confused mass, besides beliefs properly religious, morality, law, the principles of political or­ ganization, and even science. Religion ... regulated the details of private life (DL:135). In primitive societies, criminal law is religious law.... Offenses against the gods are offenses against society (DL: 92) . ... All laws come from the divinity; to violate them is to offend the divinity, and such offenses are sins which must be expiated (DL:139). If there is one truth that history teaches us beyond doubt, it is that religion tends to embrace a smaller and smaller portion of social life. Originally, it pervades everything; everything social is religious, the two words are synony­ mous. Then, little by little, political, economic, scien­ tific functions free themselves from the religious func­ tion, and constitute themselves apart (DL:169). Sociologists and historians are tending increasingly to reach common agreement that religion is the most primi­ tive of all social phenomena. All other manifestations of collective activity--law, morality, art, science, politi­ cal formation, etc. have emerged from it, by a series of transformations. In the beginning, everything is religious [1897] (in Giddens, 1972a:16l). Religion contains within itself from the very beginning, even if in an undistinct state, all the elements which in dissociating themselves from it, articulating themselves, and combining with one another in a thousand ways, have given rise to the various manifestations of collective life. From myths and legends have issued forth science and poet­ ry; from religious ornamentations and cults have come the plastic arts; from ritual practice were born law and morals. One cannot understand our perception of the world, of im­ mortality, of life, if one does not know the religious be­ liefs which are their primordial forms. Kinship started as an essentially religious tie; punishment, contract, gift, and homage are transformations of expiatory, contractual, communal, honorary sacrifices, and so on •••• • --246-­ • A great many problems change their aspects completely as soon as their connections with the sociology of religion are recognized. Our efforts must therefore be aimed at tracing these connections [1899] (1960:350-5l). • It is through a religion that we are able to trace the structure of a society, the stage of unity it has reach­ ed, and the degree of cohesion of its parts, besides the expanse of the area it inhabits (PECM:160). Religions are the primitive way in which societies become conscious of themselves and their history. They are in the social order what sensation is in the individual • (PECM:160) . Durkheim was interested to discover in ... primitive reli­ • gion that undifferentiated whole from which the elements of society gradually differentiated .... With the example of the Australian clan and its religious life, he under­ took to analyze the social analogue of the unicellular or­ ganism, the basic sLructural type from which all the other social structures have differentiated (Bellah, 1959:456). Religion •.. constitutes the fount from which all other institutions have sprung, at the dawn of each society. • One might say that myth is the prototype, and the ulti­ mate source, of all knowledge, and ritual, the prototype, and ultimate source, of all conduct (poggi, 1971:253). • In the primitive religion of totemism, Durkheim believed he had found the seeds of all later developments of the human intellect. What he wanted to demonstrate was that the original source of logical thought lies in the collect­ ivity, and that religion was the first seat of collective consciousness. He held that science and philosophy, the crowning achievements of reason, also have their genesis in religion. It is in primitive beliefs that man first conceived of things being related to one another intern­ • ally; it is through religion that men first grasped the • unity of nature, the totality of things. The realm of the sacred embraces both the physical and the social world; religious forces provide the nexus between things which to the senses appear discrete and unconnected. Once man began to think that what appears dissimilar to his senses may have an internal unity, science and philosophy become possible .••. In brief, the dual aspects of religious for­ ces--their physical and moral aspects--made religion the matrix from which the main seeds of civilization developed (Tiryakian, 1962:4l-2). • [Durkheim's] ... historical studies pointed out that all social institutions develop from a common sphere of life which is the fountainhead, the primordial institution of all human societies (Tiryakian, 1964:250). • • --247-­ • The fundamental categories of thought and ••• science are of religious origin .••• Up until a relatively advan­ ced moment of evolution, moral and legal rules have been indistinguishable from ritual prescriptions .... Nearly all the great social institutions have been born in reli­ gion (EF:466). Religion is the womb from which come all the leading germs of human civilization (EF:255). • Today we are beginning to realize that law, morals, and even scientific thought were born of religion, were for a long time confounded with it, and have remained pene­ trated with its spirit (EF:87). • Between the logic of religious thought and that of scien­ tific thought there is no abyss (EF:27l). • We have shown •.• that the most essential ideas of the human mind--ideas of time, space, type and form, force and causality, and personality--those, in short, to which philosophers have given the name of 'categories,' and which dominate all logical activity, were elaborated with­ in the very center of religion. Science has borrowed them from religion. There is no gulf between these two stages in the intellectual life of mankind [1913] (in Giddens, 1972a:248) • • Preface. "In the beginning," Emile Durkheim observed, "reli­ gion comprises all, extends to all" (DL:135). Throughout his career, Durkheim suggested that "the elementary forms of reli­ • gious life" served as the original and prime matrix out of which all the other major cultural forms emerged. Durkheim discovered that originally "religion pervaded the whole so­ cial life" (DL:14l); religion, society, culture, and the in­ • dividual were fused together in what I shall call the "primi­ tive sacral complex," or, for short, the "sacral womb." The primitive or elementary sacral complex served as the prime evolutionary womb of society and culture, as the original and • fundamental ground of civilizational process. "Religion is the womb from which come all the leading germs of civilization" (EF:255). Indeed, Durkheim's special sociologies--his studies of religion, morality, law, logic and science, anomie, educa­ • tion, the family, and so forth--all were anchored in the notion of the primitive sacral complex as their prime genetic matrix. • • --248-­ ! submit that the full significance of Durkheim'~ guiding para­ ~ of the primitive sacral complex ~ the prime evolutionary • womb of society, culture, and person still awaits rediscovery as a fundamental interpretive strategy in the human sciences. Moreover, Durkheim's forgotten seminal paradigm represents a needed complement and reinforcement for the work of the other • pioneering architect of the sociology of religion--r mean Max Weber. This convergence of theoretical and evolutionary per­ spectives represents a most promising synthesis in the compara­ tive and historical sociology of religion and culture (eg. see • B. Nelson, 1973a). Now, as we discovered in Chapter Four, Durkheim saw man in generic terms as homo religiosus. Man is the sociocultural animal who makes and remakes himself through the genetic medium • of collective symbolic process. Thus, human society itself ori­ ginates primarily through the creative medium of symbolic ritual. Collective ritual overcomes the egoism inherent in human nature, and by gathering people together and focussing social energies • in a kind of moral implosion, generates the first symbolic form of collective self-consciousness. "Symbolism is 'necessary if society is to become conscious of itself' and no less indispen­ sable for assuring the continuation of this consciousness;' in­ • deed, 'social life in all its aspects and in every period of its histo ry is made possible only by a vast symbolism' " (Lukes, 1973:472). Further, when human sentiments reach a high degree of intensity, they take on a religious aspect, that is, they • become objects of obligatory respect, founts of moral authority, of legitimacy, of "sacredness." Through the creation of a pub­ lic symbolic process, embodied in what Nelson (1973a) terms a "sacro-magical collective conscience,' we witness the awakening • of the phenomenological anchors of collective symbolism (cul­ ture)--namely, conscience and consciousness, and thus, in turn, the creation of the person. Two prime characteristics of the emergence of these ele­ • mentary cultural forms are that they are: (a) socio-centric in terms of reference and, at the same time, (b) governed by sacro­ magical rationales and practices. This means that structures of • ------- ---- --- • • • • • • • • • • .- .._----- ---_._ .. -----_._-----------­ conscience and consciousness, of prime rules and meanings, are simultaneously centered around social forms and permeated by religious rationales and magical rites. In sum, the collect­ ive foundations of legitimate moral and intellectual authority are grounded in the group and its religion; one might say that they are "fused" together. This is the basis of Mauss's famous notion of the sociological task as seeking out "total social facts" (ego 1967). Here, we shall turn our attention to the high degree of fusion between these prime characteristics of early culture s . But, since our focus has now shifted from generic to genetic-evolutionary perspectives, we shall also be concerned with the historical significance of the primitive sacral com­ plex in which we may discover two opposed meanings. For the double historical significance of the sacral complex is that it both served as the creative womb of human culture and an obstacle to progressive cultural evolution. First, as a crea­ tive womb, Durkheim suggested that all the major cultural forms, and the even the notion of the person, are originally sacral creations. "The most essential ideas of the human mind .•. were elaborated within the very center of religion" (in Gid­ dens, 1972a:248). For behind the elementary phenomenologies or concrete ana-logics of mythical and ritual processes, Durkheim professed to discover the "contagiousness" of what might be called "sacred electricity" as the unifying principle of prim­ itive cosmologies and ethical systems. What sensory experience separated, religion bound together (as in the root meaning of "re-ligare"). Without the "essentialism" provided by the in­ visible world, which cuts across all empirically separate do­ mains, neither logic, nor the person, nor even society itself, or indeed, any other crucial cultural form, could be construct­ ed. Indeed, the fusion of society, culture, and person with religion and magic was the mutual precondition of their very existence. This awarding of the first, and in a certain sense, highest, rank, to the sacral womb was Durkheim's boldest, least known, and, perhaps to some, most astonishing idea. --249-­ • • --250-­ But, if the sacral womb served as the essential prin­ ciple of the fusion of society, culture, tradition, and per­ • son into a coherent and meaningful pattern, then it has to be acknowledged that it also served to con-fuse them. "It [religion] contains in a confused mass, besides beliefs pro­ perly religious, morality, law, the principles of political • organization, and even science" (DL:135). ~10reover, religious sanctions permeated everyday life, they "regulated the de­ tails of private life" (DL:135), which means, of course, since religion was collective, there was often no clear se­ • paration between public and private spheres. Indeed, as Durk­ heim noted, "Originally religion pervades everything: every­ thing social is religious, the two words are synonymous" (DL: 169). If "charisma," to use Weber's parallel term, transform­ • ed empirical diversity into moral and cognitive unity, it also acted to imprison the former in the latter. "To primitive so­ cieties, criminal law is religious law •••• Offenses against the gods are offenses against society" (DL:92). Thus, the • struggle to disengage from the intrusive and all-embracing claims of religious sanctions, the attempt to carve out auto­ nomous spheres for thought and action--in short, the release from sacral control--becomes a key problematic for historical • investigation. For, subsuming all certain knowledge under mythical and magical categories inevitably masks the autonomy of the empirical world: submitting all questions of valid judgement and action to the pressure of sacral and magical • controls inevitably represses diversity and innovation. "All laws come from the divinity: to violate them is to offend the divinity, and such offenses are sins which must be expiated" (DL:139). Indeed, these are the type of insights which formed • the basis of the Enlightenment critique of religion, against which Durkheim took up such an ambivalent position. Now, Durkheim proposed that as societies grow more complex and differentiate, cultural forms and the notion of • the person also evolve. This differentiating co-evolution means that the various departments of society, spheres of cul­ • --251-­ ture, and dimensions of the person grow increasingly autono­ mous. Living their own life alone, each element develops its I. • own special physiognomy, and becomes governed by its own law. If there is one truth that history teaches us beyond doubt, it is that religion tends to embrace a smaller and smaller portion of social life .... Little by little, political, economic, scientific functions free them­ selves from the religious function, and constitute • themselves apart (DL:169). The struggle of the various spheres of life to separate them­ selves out from their original fusion in the sacral womb be­ comes a central concern. Separation, division, differentiation, • autonomization--all faces of the same process--become the roots of the historical problematic of secularization. This historical dialectic of fusion and diffusion, of merger and division--two of the many faces of the eternal dia­ • lectic between the one and the many--constitutes an essential problematic of the comparative and historical sociology of re­ ligion to Durkheim. In his concern with the autonomization and rationalization of culture and person, Durkheim converged with • Weber's great historical and comparative inquiries into the vicissitudes experienced by societies which attempt to prevent secularization by maintaining the fusion of the sacral complex or to accelerate diffusion and secularization. • But secularization always implies at least two related, though sometimes opposed, sociocultural processes. Religion be­ comes secularized, first, in the sense that the intensity of sa­ cral images and sanctions, and the degree of social control ex­ • erted by sacerdotal institutions, are diminished or eroded in • sociocultural evolution. But the second sense of seculariza­ tion is equally crucial--namely, that sacral images and sanc­ tions become progressively translated and sedimented into sec­ ular spheres. l This notion of secularization as cultural trans­ lation represents the crucial third term, or process, in the historical problematic of the relations between society and re­ ligion. For, if the archaic sacral complex served as the con­ • stitutive instrument and evolutionary womb of society, culture, and person, and if, on the contrary, much of progressive socio­ cultural evolution is accomplished only through separation from • --252-­ the fusion demanded by religious norms and sacerdotal institu­ tions, then secularization as translation mediates between • these two apparently opposed processes. A primal unity anchor­ ed in religion, the separation and autonomization of the sec­ ular world, and then secularization as reciprocal translation become the three faces, or phases, of mainline world-his~ • torical process to sociologists of religion and culture. It is precisely in his insightful recognition of the double significance of the primitive sacral complex and the double meanings of secularization that Durkheim overcame the • prejudices against religion of his Enlightenment brethren, and which, albeit belatedly, constitutes his revolution in the hu­ man sciences. Thus, like his contemporary Max Weber, Durkheim viewed the intimate links between religion, society, culture, • and the person as functioning sometimes as obstacles, sometimes as facilitators of sociocultural evolution. Although he did not possess Weber's sensitivity to the historical vicissitudes of this complex dialectic of release and control--best seen as • struggles over claims to preeminent legitimate moral and intel­ lectual authority--Durkheim was also fundamentally concerned with the ways in which religious rationales and ritual prac­ • tices served to advance or retard cultures along the mainlines of increasing autonomization, rationalization, and universali­ zation. We shall explore the latter processes more fully in the succeeding chapters. It is appropriate, therefore, that when Durkheim came • to announce his program in the prefaces to ~'Annee sociologique he suggested to the several sciences of man: "A great many problems change their aspects completely as soon as their con­ • nections with the sociology of religion are recognized. Our efforts must therefore be aimed at tracing these connections" [1899] (1960:350). Yet, since Durkheim's death, few sociologists, and fewer still researchers in related areas, have heeded or, • indeed, even recognized this crucial foundation of Durkheim's charter for sociology and the human sciences. What precisely does the notion of the primitive sacral complex imply? How did • • • • • • • • • • --253-- Durkheim, an arch-positivist, come to grant religion both gen­ eric and genetic primacy? And what can Durkheim's seminal para­ digm of the primitive sacral complex mean to the systematic study of the interrelations between religion, society, culture, personal phenomenologies, and historical processes today? We shall explore these and related questions in this chapter. Before exploring the various phases in Durkheim's devel­ opment of the central significance of the primitive sacral com­ plex, let us first examine other observers' dawning recognition of the importance of Durkheim's paradigm, and his genetic-evo­ lutionary presuppositions. A. Precedents Fortunately, the current renaissance in Durkheim studies has shown some glimmering awareness of the centrality of Durk­ heim's notion of the primitive sacral complex. As Robin Horton observes: " •.• people are mining the rich seams of his thought as energetically as ever, and yet these seams show little sign of exhaustion" (1973:271). This nascent recovery is even more striking since it results from a converging series of largely independent discoveries. Although influenced by the earlier generation who "rescued" Durkheim (eg. Parsons, Alpert, Evans­ Pritchard, to mention only a few leaders) from the cudgels of his less sympathetic critics, this current renaissance has given Durkheim's life-work more systematic and detailed consi­ deration. In addition, many important articles and short pie­ ces have been newly translated. Slowly, a different picture of Durkheim and his work begins to emerge: as Kenneth Burke said: "A way of seeing is always a way of not seeing." This dictum applies doubly to the present case. Since Durkheim rarely spel­ led out his fundamental interpretive logics, his evolving "10­ gics-in-use," the 'Inuclear structure" of his work often remains obscure. Consequently, even those who have recently rediscover­ ed Durkheim's paradigm of the primitive sacral womb remain in­ clined to treat this notion only in passing. However, a few theorists, boldly breaking with past neglect, and realizing • • • • • • • • • • • ·--254-­ the evolutionary significance of this paradigm, have begun to incorporate Durkheim's original perspective into their own work. A careful review of recent literature reveals a mounting series of what might be called "parenthetical" recognitions of Durkheim's thesis of the generic and genetic-evolutionary pri­ macy of the primitive sacral complex. For example, in 1959 in an important review of Durkheim's life-long concern with his­ toricalprocess (all the more remarkable since it came from with­ in the Parsonian functionalist camp), Robert Bellah cited the programmatic passage from the second Annee preface, and remark­ ed: Durkheim was interested to discover in religion, espe­ cially primitive religion, that undifferentiated whole from which the elements of society gradually differen­ tiated.... With the example of the Australian clan and its religious life, he undertook to analyze the social analogue of the unicellular organism, the basic struct­ ural type from which all the other social structures have differentiated (1959:456). Bellah also noted, in regard to the second Annee preface, that Durkheim actually undertook researches into these problems, es­ pecially in what I shall call the second and third phases of his development of the significance of the sacral womb (see Bellah, 1959:456).1 A year later, Joseph Neyer also cited the relevant sec­ tion from the second Annee preface, but in a footnote, and with­ out developing its implications (1960:67, #61) .In 1962, Edward Tiryakian clearly perceived the centrality of Durkheim's para­ digm: In presenting Durkheim's perspective on religion, our main interest has been to show the crucial role he at­ tributed to religion in the development of human thought. In the primitive religion of totemism, Durkheim believed he had found the seeds of all later developments of the human intellect. What he wanted to demonstrate was that the original source of logical thought lies in the col­ lectivity, and that religion was the first seat of col­ lective consciousness. He held that science and philoso­ phy, the crowning achievements of reason, also have their genesis in religion. It is in primitive beliefs that man first conceived of things being related to one another in­ ternally~ it is through religion that men first grasped the unity of nature, the totality of things. The realm of the sacred embraces both the physical and the social • • --255-­ • • • • • • • • • world~ religious forces provide the nexus between things which to the senses appear discrete and unconnected. Once man began to think that what appears dissimilar to his senses may have an internal unity, science and philo­ sophy became possible .... In brief, the dual aspects of religious forces--their physical and moral aspects--made religion the matrix from which the main seeds of civili­ zation developed (1962:4l-2). And in 1964, Tiryakian remarked, in passing, that Durkheim's " ... historical studies pointed out that all social institutions develop from a common sphere of life which is the fountainhead, the primordial institution of all human societies" (1964:250~ my emphasis). 1 In 1965, Robert Nisbet, speaking of the analysis in The Elementary Forms of representative rites, noted that" ... out of these representative rites also came ... esthetic and rec­ reational activities .... The gradual disengagement of these activities from the original religious matrix constitutes one important phase of secularization of culture" {1965:87).2 And in 1967, Raymond Aron remarked that in Durkheim's eyes: "Reli­ gion is the original nucleus from which not only moral and re­ ligious rules in the strict sense have emerged ... but from which scientific thought too has derived" {1967:6l-2).3 Also in 1967, W.H. Stanner noted the significance of Durkheim's claims for the genetic-evolutionary primacy of the sacral com­ plex, citing Durkheim's defense of the autonomization of reli­ gious collective representations vis-a-vis the materialist view of history in a book review in 1897 (1967:22l). 4 In 1971, Poggi utilized the telling phrase "religion as the proto-institution" to characterize Durkheim's notion of the genetic primacy of the primitive sacral complex, which he described in these terms: Religion •.. constitutes the fount from which all other institutions have sprung, at the dawn of each society. One might say that myth is the prototype, and the ulti­ mate source, of all knowledge, and ritual, the proto­ type, and ultimate source, of all conduct (197l:253). Poggi also cited the relevant section to Durkheim's preface to 5the second volume of L'Annee sociologique. In 1972, LaCapra, in another revealing phrase, described the genetic-evolutionary • • • • • • • • • • • --256-­ primacy of the sacral womb as a "primitive nebula" (1972:105) from which all the other cultural forms have emerged. l Also in 1971, Anthony Giddens noted in passing that "In his earli­ est writings, Durkheim commented on the importance of religion to society, recognizing it to be the original source of all subsequently evolved moral, philosophical, scientific, and jur­ idical ideas" (197la:l05). And in 1972, Giddens proposed that one of the major propositions in The Elementary Forms was Durk­ heim's thesis that" ... representations created in religion are the initial source from which all subsequent forms of hu­ man thought have become differentiated" (1972a:20-l). Giddens further observed: In the collective representations of primitive religion, there are fused together nascent conceptions of science, poetry, and art. The various branches of intellectual activity only become differentiated out of this original set of representations with the growth of social differ­ entiation in the division of labor and the consequent fragmentation of the integral conscience collective of primitive society. The differentiation of intellectual life accompanies the evolving differentiation in moral ideas (1972a:26). And, finally, in 1973 Steven Lukes again cited the se­ cond Annee preface (1973:237), but without developing its signi­ ficance. However, in regard to Durkheim's article published in the same volume "On the Definition of Religious Phenomena," Lukes remarks that it " •.• was a first, rather groping attempt, to see religion as a social phenomena, indeed, the primitive social phenomena, from which all others subsequently emerged" (1973:240). Of the same essay, Lukes further notes: What characterized religion was the inseparable unity of thought and action: it corresponded to a 'stage of social development at which these two functions are not yet dissociated and established apart from one another, but are still so confused with one another that it is impossible to mark a clear dividing line between them' (1973:242) . Lukes, too, noted Durkheim's argument that "the fundamental no­ tions of science are of religious origin" (1973:444). Further, Lukes cited the neglected Annee book review in 1913 by Durk­ heim of his own Elementary Forms and a related work by Levy­ Bruhl in which Durkheim clearly reiterated the dual generic • • --257-­ and genetic-evolutionary primacy of the primitive sacral com­ plex (Giddens, 1972a:246-9 provides a translation). Finally, • although ambivalent about Durkheim's evolutionary claims, Lukes acknowledged that " ... the hypothesis that primitive and traditional religions contain the germs of scientific thinking is, in many ways, both challenging and plausible" (1973:449}.1 • Finally, Neil Smelser noted in passing that "Religion was re­ garded by Durkheim as the undifferentiated parent of all suc­ ceeding cultural forms" (1976:lll}.2 Now, one remarkable thing about this mounting series of • rediscoveries of Durkheim's paradigm of the primitive sacral complex as the womb of society and culture is not only that these were (apparently) independent, but that these various ob­ servers managed to cite relevant evidence from many different • Durkheimian texts! 3 Again and again, whic~vflxt or observer, revealing phrases such as fount, fountainhead, womb, matrix, nucleus, primordial institution, proto-institution, primitive nebula, and so forth, are invoked to describe the same funda­ • mental insight of Durkheim. And yet, and this is the reason cite so extensively, ~ of these recent observers apparently recognized the full significance of Durkheim'~ paradigm.4 Happily, however, at least two different sociocultural • and evolutionary thinkers have gone beyond these preliminary or "parenthetical" recognitions, and have moved to consciously incorporate Durkheim's paradigm into their own interpretive frameworks. Their independent rediscovery has stimulated them • to some powerful intellectual reformulations which are destin­ ed to have an important impact on the comparative sociology of religion, and upon the study of the evolving relations between religion, society, culture, and the person in general. First, • in a most thoughtful essay, Robin Horton was one of the first to begin to properly emphasize the genetic-evolutionary nature of Durkheim's theses in the sociology of religion, morality, and knowledge • • Horton is most sensitive to Durkheim's thesis that " ••• we find the vital germs of the most elaborated sciences in the first stirrings of the most primitive religions" (1973:262) • • I • --258-­ Concentrating his attention on Durkheim's notion of the "way. in which primitive religious thought gives rise to the theoret­ • ical sciences," Horton states: • As I read Durkheim, the core of this sociology of thought is the thesis that most aspects of mental life have grown by differentiation and elaboration from a primitive religious basis. By 'most aspects, , I mean not only religion as moderns know it, but the arts, the theoretical constructions of the sciences, • and, indeed, the very categories of logical thought (1973:258) • In an instructive comparison, Horton contrasts Durkheim's model of the genetic-evolutionary primacy of the primitive sacral com­ • plex with another classic paradigm deriving from the same gener­ al school--namely, Levy-Bruhl's notion of the chasm between prim­ itive and modern mentality. Rather than contrasting and dichoto­ mizing primitive (or sub-tribal and tribal) with modern (or civ­ • ilizational) thought, Durkheim instead emphasized their funda­ mental evolutionary continuities. Where Levy-Bruhl entertained a contrast/inversion schema, Durkheim worked out of a continui­ ty-evolution schema. • To put it in a nutshell, Levy-Bruhl sees the relation between 'primitive' and 'modern' in terms of contrast, and the transition between them in terms of inversion, while Durkheim sees the relation in terms of continuity, and the transition as a process of evolution (1973:270). But so surprising to those of us who have been brought up to believe the core of Durkheim's sociology of religion is the sacred/profane dichotomy is Durkheim's contention that II ••• • our logic was born of this logic •.. between the logic of reli­ gious and scientific thought there is no abyss II (EF: 270), that Horton was led to remark: • Most readers are likely to be thoroughly puzzled by my exposition. For they have been brought up to believe that what I call Durkheim's subsidiary thesis is, in fact, his principal if not his only thesis. As for what I have taken as his primary thesis, this for many will be the first time they have heard of it. Some may even wonder if it isn't just a figment of my imagination! (1973:267) • • Horton's point is well-taken, for so conditioned have we become to the standard, truncated image of Durkheim's sociology of re­ ligion that we may well be reluctant to part with our prejudi­ • l • --259-­ • • • • • • • • • ces! Horton concludes: ••. orthodox modern social scientists tend to proclaim themselves disciples of Durkheim in their approach to the study of religion. But, in their actual analyses, they ignore the main theme of their master'~ work in this sphere, and extol an inconsistent minor theme .... This is a very oda-situation (1973:276; my emphasis). It is, indeed, a very odd situation; a problem for the history of sociological theory, and the sociology of knowledge. Why have we so persistently slighted Durkheim's paradigm of the primitive sacral complex? Perhaps the most distinctive and potent effort yet made to incorporate aspects of Durkheim's notion of the centrality of the primitive sacral complex into a comparative and evolu­ tionary sociocultural framework can be found in the 1973 essay "Civilizational Complexes and Inter-Civilizational Encounters" by Benjamin Nelson. From the perspective of an in-depth compar­ ative and historical differential sociology of the changing foundations of claims to preeminent legitimate moral and in­ tellectual authority, Nelson has distinguished three basic structures of conscience and consciousness on the world-his­ torical level. His stated intention is " •.. to discriminate a series of patterns in the structures of consciousness, and the degree of collectivity or individuality in the forms of their representation" (1973~9l). Significantly, Nelson's path-break­ ing efforts have been inspired by the work of both Weber and Durkheim on primitive and archaic religion and culture. Nelson acknowledges the complementariness of these pioneer's perspect­ i ves: "Weber's frames need to be supplemented by reference to the works of Durkheim, Mauss, and Maine, especially the essay by Durkheim and Mauss on Primitive Classification, and Durk­ heim's ... Elementary Forms" (1973a:92). What Nelson has term­ ed "Consciousness Type I"--a "sacro-magical collective con­ science"--was directly influenced by Durkheim's notion of the genetic-evolutionary primacy of the primitive sacral complex, and the importance 0 f "altruisme" a},~3uicidal "ideal type" which reveals its inner structure. • --260-­ • The first pattern of structures of consciousness is characterized by the predominance of collective accep­ tances of responsibility to make amends for collective wrongs or falls from a state of undividedness. The ru­ • ling supposition is that all lapses from unity in both macrocosm and microcosm have to be atoned by collective assumptions of liability, collective propitiations, sac­ rifices, commemorations .... The ruling instances of these sacro-magical forms may be found in all societal and civilizational complexes dominated by prescriptive etiquettes and rituals all oriented to the total ful­ fillment of laws believed to be ontological in charact­ er and to have their sanctions in the cosmic orders, the commands of the ancestors, the primordial tradi­ tions, that require they be preserved through literal performance of fixed obligations. A number of varia­ • tions are possible in the social structural guarantees of these ritual performances. These differences do not, however, fundamentally alter the central supposition that the whole society is under total obligation to fulfill the ontological demands and to offer totalis­ tic propitiations, placations, commemorations, if the harmonies of the cosmos are to endure ... or to be re­ stored.... The central reality is the dominance of a sacro-magical structure which binds the entire commun­ ity in ... expressions of the collective conscience • (1973a:91-2) • Surely we need deeply informed and bold extensions of our pio­ neer's paradigms, such as Nelson's, which help us to corne to grips with the world-historical significance of the primitive • sacral complex as the womb of society, culture, person. • • • • • --261-­ B. Durkheim'~ Genetic-Evolutionary Methodology Why have we so persistently slighted Durkheim's central • paradigm of the primitive sacral complex as the evolutionary womb of society, culture, and person? Perhaps our neglect here stems from both our failure to adequately distinguish between analyses pitched at the generic and the genetic levels, and • Durkheim's own characteristic conflation of the two approaches. Let us, therefore, briefly consider the "madness in Durkheim's method" in deliberately fusing his generic and genetic-evolu­ tionary approaches in his paradigm of the sacral womb. • Stemming largely from the influence of the British an­ thropologists and American functionalists, the standard, trun­ cated image of Durkheim's sociology of religion is that it was pitched primarily, or at least most intelligibly, on the gener­ • ic or universal social structural level. The claim was that re­ ligion and ritual served multiple social functions--especially the promotion of social solidarity. Ever since Parsons pro­ claimed that Durkheim's central problem was the search for the • generic bases of social order and control, and that Durkheim's central problem concerned "social statics," Durkheim's genetic­ and evolutionary theses have languished in darkness. Durkheim's own claims for the genetic and evolutionary significance of • his pilgrimage to the "elementary forms" have often annoyed (eg. Evans-Pritchard, 1965, W.H. Stanner, 1967, Lukes, 1973), or puzzled these theorists (eg. Bellah, 1973). The British an­ thropologists and American functionalists' search for the gen­ • eric or universal structures of human society led them to per­ sistently slight Durkheim's genetic and evolutionary claims; in short, their generic emphases swamped out Durkheim's genetic emphasis. Giddens especially has noted this persistent " .•• • tendency of secondary writers to conflate Durkheim's function­ al and historical analysis in a way which is in fact foreign to Durkheim's thought" (197la:106). Indeed, Giddens deserves credit for having repeatedly stressed that Durkheim's Elemen­ • tary Forms has to be read genetically (197la:114). As early as 1895 in The Rules, Durkheim explicitly term­ • • --262-­ • ed his method "genetic" (R:138), and proposed the following interpretive canon: "One cannot explain a social fact of any complexity except by following its complete development through all social species" (R:139). And in 1898, Durkheim prefacedhis Annee essay on "Incest" with this methodological rule: • In order to understand a practice or an institution, a juridical or moral rule, it is necessary to trace • it as nearly as possible to its origin; for between the form it now takes and what it has been, there is a rigorous relationship. No doubt, as any institution is transformed during its course of development, the factors on which it largely depended for its exist­ ence have also varied. However, these transformations, in their turn, are likewise dependent on the nature of the point of departure. There are social phenomena, just as there are organic phenomena, and although the manner in which they must develop is not fatally pre­ • determined by the properties which characterize them at their birth, these properties do not cease to have • a profound influence on the entire course of their history [1898] (1963:13). Now, it must be acknowledged that much of the confusion and neglect was unintentionally assisted by Durkheim's own characteristic conflation of generic and genetic-evolutionary analyses. As Tiryakian reminds us, "The French elementaire sig­ nifies not only 'elementaryJ as in a scale of complexity, but • also 'fundamental' or 'basic' (1962:19). It is precisely in these terms that Durkheim's British anthropological critics • have charged him with confusing "earliest" and "simplest" (eg. Lukes, 1973:456). Even so, the logic underlying Durkheim's "conflation" of his search for the universal or generic essence of human society with his genetic investigations into the evol­ ution of society and culture remains opaque to many. For exam­ ple, contrasting what he takes to be Weber's comparative and • historical investigations into the world-religions with Durk­ • heim's crucial experiment focussed on a single "elementary form," William Runciman contends that the latter's sociology of religion was "fundamentally misconceived" (1969:187; 191). But Runciman, and others, fail to perceive that £y fusing his generic and genetic-evolutionary investigations into the na­ ture and development of society and culture, Durkheim sought • • --263-­ to find a paradigmatic situation, a prime case-study, in which there would be a one-to-one correspondence, as it were, • between symbolic forms and social forms, between the substra­ tum of social morphological processes and superstructural so­ cial physiological or symbolic cultural processes. Where collectively symbolic representations are deeply • inter-fused with the fundamental structures of the group, Durk­ heim felt he had discovered the IImonocellularll (see Bellah, 1959:456-7) form of sociocultural life; the template, as it were, from which all complex sociocultural forms have evolved. • Thus, the generic links between religion, society, and culture which Durkheim thought he had discovered in Australian abori­ ginal religion were primarily genetic and evolutionary connect­ ions. Durkheim himself went to great lengths in the introduct­ • ion to The Elementary Forms to explain his seemingly peculiar method. To those who might object to his conflation of generic with genetic analyses, he rhetoricized: IIBut why give them [the elementary forms] a sort of prerogative? Why choose them • in preference to all others as the subject of our study? It is merely for reasons of method ll (EF:15). He then justified his genetic methodology in these terms: Everytime that we undertake to explain something human, • taken at a given moment in history--be it a religious belief, a moral precept, a logical principle, an esthet­ ic style, or an economic system--it is necessary to com­ mence by going back to its most primitive and simple form, to try to account for the characteristics by which it was marked at that time, and then to show how it de­ • veloped and became complicated little by little, and how it became that which it is at the moment in question (EF:15). Thus, Durkheim's approach was always processual--it is simply mistaken to portray Durkheim as a static, abstracted thinker • searching for the generic bases of social order and control. For it is absolutely crucial to realize that Durkheim's causal model--substructural social morphological processes and super­ structural collectively representational processes--led him • to always return to the simplest case, the clearest connection between these two halves of human society. For here IIAll is reduced to that which is indispensable, to that without which • I­ I • • --264-­ there could be no religion. But that which is indispensable is that which is essential--that which we must know before all else" (EF:IB). • Indeed, it is not surprising that Durkheim justified his characteristic conflation of generic and genetic-evolution­ ary analyses by likening them to Descartes' "first ring" (EF: 16) of certainty. For, in the last analysis, Durkheim's confla­ • tion derived from his cultural tradition--it was the sociologi­ cal equivalent of the Cartesian method of systematic doubt, and return to first principles as the only sure road to object­ ive certainty. Moreover, Durkheim's genetic and evolutionary • presuppositions were basically those of the Enlightenment (see Cassirer, 1951). "He [Durkheim] simply took it as axiomatic that there is an identity between simplicity and evolutionary priority" (Lukes, 1973:456). Viewing his conflation of generic • and genetic in this perspective, we should no longer wonder that only in terms of the most "elementary" forms--in both senses--did Durkheim believe that he could surely uncover gen­ eric sociocultural processes directly and unmistakably inter­ fused with genetic-evolutionary ones. "Primitive civilizations offer privileged cases because they are simpler ones" (EF:IB). And again, "In the primitive religions, the religious fact • still visibly carries the mark of its origins" (EF:20). Those who persist in readi$Durkheim'~ fundamental investigations as if they were solely or even primarily abstract, ahlstori­ cal, functional propositions, must continue to neglect Durk­ • heim'~ own logic and method, and his insistence that the in­ timate relations between society, culture, and person are e­ volutionarily constructed. As Giddens rightly notes: "There is no universal relationship between systems of ideas and • their infrastructures; the nature of this relationship is con­ tingent upon the level of advancement of society" (1972a:27). Indeed, Durkheim clearly saw, as did Weber, that as societies evolve, so too do their prime symbolic guidance sys­ • tems. In the general evolutionary passage from "mechanical" to "organic solidarity," Durkheim perceived a whole series of • • --265-­ progressive sociocultural shifts in the content, form, and di­ • rection of development of collective symbolic forms, which more • or less corresponded to underlying social morphological differ­ entiations. From The Division of Labor, through Primitive Class­ ification to The Elementary Forms, Durkheim never wavered from his primary concern (see Horton, 1973; Giddens, 1971a,b;1972a, • b;1973) with the transformation of the concrete, tribal, fused, sacral-magical collective consciousness into ever-more abstract, autonomous, differentiated, rational, and universalizable cul­ tural symbolic forms. Indeed, toward the end of his life, Durk­ • heim (with Mauss) turned his attention explicitly to the sedi­ mentation and diffusion of universalizable symbolic forms on the inter-societal level as these became the basis of civiliza­ tional bonds (see Chapter Seven). • In these terms, the genetic-evolutionary significance of the primitive sacral complex becomes clearer--for it served as the prime evolutionary matrix out of which all the other ma­ jor social, cultural, and phenomenological forms progressively • emerged. When he announced his program of detailed research into the world-historical creativity of the sacral womb in the preface to the second volume of L'Annee sociologique, Durkheim acknowledged that awarding it primacy might surprise some:"The • according of first rank to this set of phenomena has produced some astonishment, but it is these phenomena which are the germ from which all the others •.. are derived" [1899] (1960:350). Lest he be misunderstood, 1 Durkheim hastened to add: But it must be understood that the importance we thus attribute to the sociology of religion does not in the least imply that religion must play the same role in • present day societies that it has played at other times. In a sense, the contrary conclusion would be more sound. Precisely because religion is a primordial phenomenon, it must yield more and more to the new social forms which it has engendered. In order to understand these new forms, one must connect them with their religious origins, but without thereby confusing them with religious phenomena, • properly speaking (1960:352-3). A decade and a half later, after devoting his energies to his school's famous journal ~'Annee sociologique,Durkheim's Elementary Forms represented the culmination of his program of • • --266-­ • • • • • • • • • • detailed, multi-disciplinary research into the genetic and e­ volutionary primacy of the primitive sacral complex. Toward the end of this masterwork, Durkheim concluded: ... We have established the fact that the fundamental categories of thought, and consequently, of science, are of religious origin. We have seen that the same is true for magic and consequently for the different pro­ cesses which have issued from it .... It has long been known that up until a relatively advanced moment of e­ volution, moral and legal rules have been indistinguish­ able from ritual prescriptions. In summing up, then, it may be said that nearly all the great social insti­ tutions have been born in religion (EF:466). If we still wish to lay claim to Durkheim's "charisma-on-depo­ sit" (see McCloskey, 1974), or if we hope to understand the complex relations between religion, society, culture, person, and historical process, can we any longer afford to continue slighting Durkheim's seminal paradigm of the generic and gen­ etic-evolutionary primacy of the sacral womb? C. Phases in Durkheim'~ Development of the Notion of the Primitive Sacral Complex Preface. Durkheim's awareness of the significance of the gen­ eric and genetic evolutionary primacy of the primitive sacral complex evolved over the years in a series of distinguishable phases. In the first phase, Durkheim's "laic" positivism led him to portray religion, defined as the preeminent form of the "collective conscience" (DL:85), largely in negative terms. Using juridical indexes to discern the stages in evoluion of the "moral life," Durkheim first distinguished religion by its obligatory, "repressive," character. But it must always be re­ membered that primitive legal systems were "repressive," ac­ cording to Durkheim, because "mechanical solidarity" was deep­ ly embedded in traditional religious rationales and magical duties. Indeed, Durkheim repeatedly described transgressions in primitive cultures asftype of "religious criminality." However, as he investigated further, Durkheim's opin­ ion clearly shifted. By his own admission, 1895 was a crucial turning point. Reading Robertson Smith and lecturing on reli­ • --267-­ gion, Durkheim discovered how religious phenomena could fit more positively into his own sociological program. In his of­ • ten repeated series of lectures "Physique generale des moeurs et du droit," Durkheim constantly reworked his early emphasis on the "repressiveness" of early religions by exploring the creative embeddedness of primitive juridical forms such as • property, taxes, contract, and so on, in archaic sacral and magical rationales. And in the great L'Annee sociologique, Durkheim both announced his special program to the human sci­ ences, and carried much of it out through his own essays and • the inspiration and direction he gave to the other members of the Annee school, most notably Marcel Mauss (see Paul Honig­ sheim, 1960). In third phase, which centers, of course, on The Elemen­ • ~' Forms of the Religious Life (1912), Durkheim's program and his own systematic insight into Australian aboriginal reli­ gion and rite yielded a profound and exquisitely wrought theory of the generic and genetic-evolutionary creativeness of the • sacral womb. So central had the dual significance of the prim­ itive sacral complex become to Durkheim's system, that he never tired of repeating (eg. vis-a-vis Levy-Bruhl), that there is no gap in continuity between these stages in sociocultural • evolution! Let us now explore the first phase in Durkheim's development of the notion of the world-historical centrality of the primitive sacral complex as womb of society and culture. • 1. The Early Phase: Religion in Primitive Society as Repressive Durkheim cannot really be said to have had a sociology of religion in his early phase. As Lukes rightly observes, Durkheim's early writings on religion were rather "thin and • inconclusive" (1973:238). At this stage, his nascent sociology of religion was really only an adjunct to his concern with law and morality, and what little there was was often negative. Basically, Durkheim's early view of religion was two-fold. • First, he saw religion as the "preeminent form of the collective consciousness" (DL:285). Second, as the basis of "mechanical sol­ i'ltrity," religion was "repressive." Using law as an objective • • • • • • • I • • • • --268-­ index to determine the state of the II mora1 1ife,1I Durkheim found that II ... in primitive societies, criminal law is reli­ gious 1awll (DL:92). Penal law in II mechanica1 solidarity ll was viewed as II re1igious criminality, II as transgressions against religiously sanctioned collective norms. In his early phase, Durkheim's critical positivism held the upper hand in deter­ mining his largely negative image of primitive religion as both IIrepressivell and IIregressive.1I Perhaps Durkheim's first explicit statements on the so­ ciological nature of early religions are to be found in his re­ view of Spencer's Ecclesiastical Institutions, which appeared as part of an 1886 review essay entitled ilLes Etudes de Science Socia1e ll (translated by R.A. Jones, 1974). Of this essay, Lukes has remarked: In 1886, he had written of religion as having, together with law and morality, the role of assuring the equili­ brium of society and adapting it to external conditions and of its being a IIform of social discip1ine,1I merely a form of custom; he also saw the idea of divinity as serving to 'symbolize traditions, cultures, collective needs,' and argued that the sociologist must look at what 'the symbol conceals and translates' (1973:238). Jones has also noted some of the important continuities and discontinuities between this early essay and Durkheim's Elementary Forms. For instance, Durkheim was already insisting that we must attempt to translate the symbolic meaning of rite and myth through some type of sociological analogy. What ought to concern us is not the symbol but what the symbol stands for and expresses. What is thus hid­ den under this wholly superficial phenomenon could per­ haps be discovered if we could compare it with others which resemble it in certain ways. Indeed, what differ­ ence is there between religious prescriptions and the injunctions of morality? They are both addressed to the members of the same community, are supported by sanc­ tions that are sometimes identical and always analogous; finally, the violation of both arouses in conscience the same feelings of anger and disgust (1974:212). Further, Durkheim argues that 1I1aws, morality, religion, are the three great regulating functions of societyll (1974:213). The essential function of each is moral discipline of the ego. Religion is therefore only a form of custom, like law and manners. What distinguishes this form from all the • • --269-­ • • '. I • • • • • • others is that it imposes itself not only on conduct but on the conscience. It dictates not only acts, but ideas and sentiments~•.. Religion commences with faith, that is to say, beliefs accepted or submitted to with­ out discussion (1974:2l2-l3). Thus, religion is, at root, irrational, and when reflection is awakened "It [religion] can remain a collective discipline only if it imposes itself upon all spirits with the irrestible auth­ ority of habit" (1974:2l3). Surprisingly, Durkheim rejected Spencer's notion that " .•• evolution presumes an increasing role for reason and free inquiry to the detriment of custom and prejudice" (Jones, 1974:207). It is far from true, as Mr. Spencer thinks, that the place and importance of custom are going to diminish with civilization••.• A society without prejudices would resemble an organism without reflexes: it would be a monster incapable of living. Sooner or later, therefore, custom and habit will recover their rights; it is this that authorizes us to presume that religion will survive the attacks upon it. As long as there are men who live together, there will be among them some common faith. What one cannot foresee and what the fu­ ture alone can decide, is the particular form in which that faith will be symbolized (1974:2l3). Thus, even at this early date, Durkheim began to separate him­ self from the general nineteenth century view of religion as, at best, an immature stage which had to be overcome. For reli­ gion is identified in 1886 with tradition, custom, and a com­ mon faith, and the need for these is perennial. Finally, we should note that Durkheim saw here that " ..• if one penetra­ tes beneath the surface .•• one discovers everywhere the same development, and at the origin, the same germ" (1974:2ll). Let us turn next to The Division of Labor, published in 1893. Here, Durkheim characterized religion as the "eminent form of the collective conscience" (DL:285). And, as Lukes notes (1973:239), there was "also an inclusive and unpursued definition of religion" in these terms: ... the sole characteristic that all such ideas as reli­ gious sentiments equally present seems to be that they are common to a certain number of people living togeth­ er, and that, besides, they have an average intensity that is quite elevated. It is, indeed, a constant fact that, when a slightly strong conviction is held by the same community of men, it inevitably takes on a reli­ • • • • • • • • • • • --270-­ ious character. It inspires in consciences the same reverential respect as beliefs properly religious. It is, thus, very probable •.• that religion corresponds to a region equally central in the common conscience (DL:169). However, Durkheim admitted the provisional nature of such a view: "It remains, it is true, to circumscribe this region, to distinguish it from that to which penal law corresponds, and with which, moreover, it is often wholly or in part confused. These questions are left to study" (DL:169). Speaking of the "physiological" 'characteristics of "me­ chanical solidarity," Durkheim said " .•. religion pervades the whole society, but that is because social life is made up al­ most exclusively of common beliefs and of common practices which derive from unanimous adhesion a very particular inten­ sity" (DL:178). This social intensity means that one might term primitive culture a "conscience collective," since "all consciences vibrate in unison" (DL: 152). In "mechanical soli­ darity" " ••. all consciences are composed of practically the same elements" (DL:135). "Everybody professes and practices the same religion; schisms and dissents are unknown; they would not be tolerated" (DL:135). Clearly, Durkheim was here constructing an evolutionary "ideal type," rather than an accurate description of the diversity of all primitive cul­ tures. Thus, "solidarity which comes from likeness is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops our whole conscience and coincides at all points with it" (DL: 130). In short, Durkheim argued that " ••• social life comes from a double source, the likenesses of consciences and the division of labor. The individual .•• in the first case becomes part of the collective type" (DL:226; see also Lukes, 1973:151-2; Giddens, 1971b, 1972a; Chapter Eight of this dis­ sertation) • As is well known, Durkheim chose law, and specifically types of punishment, as his positivist index to the evolving stages of the "moral life." Underlying this choice was the presumption that "law reproduces the principal forms of social solidarity" (DL:68). Durkheim termed "repressive" the type of • • --271-­ • • • • • • • • • • religiously sanctioned collective punishment appropriate to "mechanical solidarity." "The similitude of consciences gives rise to juridical rules which, with the threat of repressive measures, impose uniform beliefs and practices upon all. The more pronounced this is, the more complete is social life con­ founded with religious life" (DL:226). Giddens summarized Durk­ heim's theses well: This dominance of the individual by the collectivity is indexed by the nature of the punishment which is meted out when a man deviates from the rigidly specified codes of conduct which are prescribed by the conscience col­ lective. Repressive sanctions are collective both rn­ their source, and in their expression. A repressive sanc­ tion is a response to the highly intense emotions which are generated in the majority of individuals when a man transgresses the ideals embodied in the conscience col­ lective. It is an expression of anger on the part of the community, the avenging of an outrage to morality (1972a:6). Thus, "repressive" law is "diffuse," that is, "the whole socie­ ty participates in it" (DL:76). Primitive penal law is not ex­ plicitly formulated because " ••• the rule is known and accep­ ted by everybody." Further, primitive penal law is stationary, conservative: " ••. in lower societies, law ••• is almost ex­ clusively penal; it is likewise very stationary. Generally, religious law is always repressive; it is essentially conser­ vative" (DL:78). 1 Therefore, primitive penal law is often ri­ tually and magically stereotyped: "tie know what a large place in the repressive law of many peoples ritual regimentation, etiquette, ceremonial, and religious practices play" (DL:72). In sum, religiously sanctioned " .•. repressive law corresponds to the heart, the very center of the common conscience" (DL:113). Whether or not Durkheim " .•• vastly overstated the role of repressive law in pre-industrial societies" (Lukes, 1973: 159; see also Sheleff, 1975), is not our prime concern here. 2 What we are concerned with is elucidating Durkheim's evolving notion of the sacral complex as a central interpretive "ideal type," a useful heuristic in the human sciences. What most in­ terests me here is Durkheim's thesis that the greater the de­ gree of penetration of legal norms ~ sacral rationales and magical sanctions, the greater the repressiveness of the pun­ • • • • • • • • • • --272-­ ishments for transgressions. What is at issue here, as Nelson (1973a) clearly saw, was the degree of collectivity or indivi­ duality in the logics of moral responsibility. That is why punishment was first an act of collective vengenance against the wrong-doer by the outraged sacral-magical common conscien­ ce; it was a demand for an "expiation of the past" (DL:88). lihen we desire the repression of a crime, it is not that we desire to avenge it personally, but to avenge something sacred.... M:>st often we represent it in the form of one of several beings: ancestors, divinity. That is why penal law is not simply religious in ori­ gin, but, indeed, always retains a religious stamp. It is because the acts it punishes appear to be at­ tacks upon something transcendent (DL:IOO). Durkheim's use of the word "expiation" here is most important. For in the primitive sacral complex, " ... offenses against the gods are offenses against society" (DL:92). Because the struct­ ures of responsibility for maintaining harmonious relations be­ tween micro and macrocosm were primarily collective, violations of religious interdictions were considered criminal because they were, in effect, sacrilege involving the fate of the whole so­ ciety. "Everybody is attacked; consequently, everybody opposes the attack" (DL:I07). Indeed, in terms of the sacral-magical collective conscience, as Nelson (1973a) has termed it, it is believed that "... all laws ... come from the divinity; to vio­ late them is to offend the divinity, and such offenses are sins which must be expiated" (DL:139). For these and other reasons, Durkheim argued that "it is certain that penal law was religious in its origin" (DL:92). Durkheim provided the following summary of the sacerdotal foun­ dations of primitive penal law. It is an evident fact in India and Judea, since the law practived there was considered revealed. In Egypt, the ten books of Hermes, which contained the criminal law with all the other books relative to the government of the state, were called sacerdotal and ..• from ear­ liest times the Egyptian priests exercised judicial power. The same was the case in ancient Germany. In Greece, justice was considered an emanation from Zeus, and the sentiments a vengenance from God. In Rome, the religious origins of penal law are clearly shown both by old traditions, and by the juridical terminology it­ self (DL:92). • • • • • • • • • • • • --273-·­ In the sacral complex, then (which may include archaic socie­ ties also)l, many criminal acts are actually delictions which, ~ violating the law of the gods, disturb the harmonious rela­ tions between macrocosm and microcosm. Such delictions or tran­ sgressions constitute public sacrilege, since they put in jeo­ pardy the fate of the whole society . ••• in lower societies, the most numerous delicts are those which relate to public affairs; delicts against religion, against custom, against authority, etc. We need only to look at the Bible, the laws of Manou, at the monuments which of the old Egyptian law, to see the relatively small place accorded to prescriptions for the protection of individuals, and, contrariwise, the luxuriant development of repressive legislation, concerning the different forms of sacrilege, the omis­ sion of certain religious duties, the demands of cere­ monial, etc. At the same time, these crimes are the most severely punished (DL:93). Durkheim later counterposed "religious criminality" with "human criminality" in his elaboration of his earlier thesis in his Annee essay "Two Laws of Penal Evolution" [1900] (1973). Clear­ ly, Durkheim was building up a positivist counterpoint to the "repressiveness" of religion in traditional societies, where: •.. because all the prescriptions that it lays down are commandments from God, so to speak, under his direct sovreignity, they all owe to this origin an extraordi­ nary prestige which renders them sacrosanct. Thus, when they are violated, public conscience does not content itself with a simple reparation, but demands expiation which avenges it. Since what gives penal law its pecu­ liar character is the extraordinary authority of the rules which it sanctions •.. law which is agreed to be the word of God Himself cannot fail to be essentially repressive. We have even been able to say that all pen­ al law is more or less religious, for its very soul is the sentiment of respect for a force superior to the individual man, for a power in some way transcendent, under some symbol which it makes penetrate into conscien­ ces, and this sentiment is also the basis of religiosity. That is why, in general fashion, repression dominates all law in lower societies. It is because religion com­ pletely pervades juridical life, as it does, indeed, all social life (DL:140-l). It is about this point that we first encounter Durkheim's earliest formulation of the notion of the sacral complex: • --274-­ • • • • • • • • • • Religion comprises all, extends to all. It contains, in a confused mass, besides beliefs properly religious, morality, law, the principles of political organization, and even science. Religion ... regulated the details of private life (DL:135). Indeed, "Religion, the eminent form of the conunon conscience, originally absorbed all representative functions with practi­ cal functions" (DL:285). It is not, surprising, then, that in such a situation where crime is religious, or should we say, "sacrilegious" : ••• there exists a luxuriant criminality, peculiar to those societies •.• delicts against religious faith, against ceremonial, against traditions of all sorts, etc. The real reason for this development of repressive rules is that this moment in the evolutionary scheme the collective conscience is extensive and strong, since labor has not yet divided (DL:146). But this homogeneity, this fusion, cannot last. Inevita­ bly, the various cultural forms begin to differentiate and au­ tonomize themselves from their fused embeddedness in the pri­ mal sacral complex. With the division of labor, the progres­ sive "extension of the radius of social life," the "efface­ ment of the segmental type of society," and so on and so forth (see Chapter Four), the structures of collective responsibili­ ~ begin to erode, and sacral rationales become secularized. Indeed, Durkheim argued that "The more or less complete dis­ sociation between law and religion is one of the best signs by which we can recognize whether a society is more or less developed than another" (DL:142). This is so because the grounds of legitimate moral and intellectual authority shift from the group and its religious tradition to the individual. Thus, Durkheim I ~ perception of progressive moral evolu­ tion was intimately bound up with the passage from collective to individual structures of responsibility. Indeed, he held it as axiomatic that " ••. the more one closely approaches the origins of religious development, the more ritual and mater­ ial practices surpass in importance purely moral beliefs and precepts, whereas the latter become more predominant in the religions of civilized peoples" (Soc:230). Through progress­ ive sociocultural evolution, collective representations shift • --275-­ in content from concrete, magically stereotyped, tribal, "re­ pressive," sacral norms to increasingly abstract, universali­ • zable, rational civilizational collective representations. • At the same time as religion, the rules of law become universal, as well as those of morality. Linked at first to local circumstances, to particularities, ethnic, cli­ matic, etc., they free themselves little by little, and with the same stroke become more general. What makes • this increase of generality obvious is the uninterrupted decline of formalism. In lower societies, the very ex­ ternal forms of conduct are predetermined even to the de­ tails. The way in which man must eat, dress in every sit­ uation, the gestures he must make, the formula he must pronounce, are precisely fixed. On the contrary, the fur­ • ther one strays from the point of departure, the more mo­ ral and juridical prescriptions lose their sharpness and precision. They rule only the most general forms of con­ duct, and rule them in a very general way .••. Civiliza­ tion has a tendency to become more rational and more lo­ gical ••• that alone is rational which is universal. What baffles understanding is the particular and the con­ crete (DL:289). So closely do Durkheim's views on sociocultural evolu­ tion here complement Weber's (ie. the decline of sacral-magical • formalism and stereotyping, etc.), that they both attributed a key role in this process of progressive rationalization and universalization of certain cultural forms to the evolving no­ tions of the gods themselves (see Weber, 1963). The evolution • of law, of conscience and consciousness, of society and cul­ ture, are, in short, all intimately bound up with religious evolution. The fact which perhaps best manifests this increasing • tendency of the common conscience is the parallel tran­ scendence of the most essential of its elements, I mean the idea of divinity. In the beginning, the gods are not distinct from the universe, or rather, there are no gods, only sacred beings without their sacred character being related to any external entity as their source .••• Little • by little, religious forces are detached from the things of which they are at first only the attributes, and be­ come hypostatized. Thus is formed the notion of spirits or gods who, while residing here or there as preferred, nevertheless exist outside of the particular objects to • which they are specifically attached. By that very fact, they are less concrete •••• They remain very near us, con­ stantly fused into our life ••.. The Greco-Latin poly­ theism, which is a more elevated and better organized form of animism, marks new progress in the direction of • • --276-­ • transcendence. The residence of the gods becomes more sharply distinct from that of men .... But it is only with Christiantiy that God takes leave of space; his kingdom is no longer of this world. The dissociation • of nature and the divine is so complete that it degen­ erates into antagonism. At the same time, the concept of divinity becomes more general and more abstract, for it is formed, not of sensations, but of ideas. The God of humanity is necessarily less concrete than the gods of the city or the clan (DL:288-89). It has not been sufficiently noticed that Durkheim maintained this view of moral and religious evolution throughout his career; clearly, the very structure of his essay (with Mauss) • on Primitive Classification is genetic and evolutionary, as is so much of The Elementary Forms. One crucial outcome of this progressive moral and reli­ gious evolution was the gradual erosion of collective struct­ • tures of moral and intellectual authority, and thus, the dis­ appearance of "religious criminality." Having so closely iden­ tified religion with strong and extensive states of the tri­ bal collective conscience, Durkheim argued that as the latter • is eroded by the division of labor, penal law is increasingly separated from religious interdictions. " .•. religious crimi­ nality ended by completely departing, or almost completely de­ parting, from penal law" (DL:164); thus, " ..• a whole world • of sentiments cease to count among the strong and defined states of the common conscience" (DL:159) . ... if there is one truth that history teaches us be­ yond doubt, it is that religion tends to embrace a • smaller and smaller portion of social life. Origin­ ally, it pervades everything; everything social is re­ • ligious, the two words are synonymous. Then, little by little, political, economic, scientific, functions free themselves from the religious function, constitute themselves apart, and take on a more and more acknow­ ledged temporal character. God, who was at first pre­ sent in all human relations progressively withdraws • from them; he abandons the world to men and their dis­ putes .•.. The individual feels himself less acted upon; he becomes more a source of spontaneous activity. In short, not only does not the domain of religion grow at the same time and in the same measure as temporal life, but it contracts more and more. This regression did not begin at some certain moment of history, but we can follow its phases since the origins of social evolution. It is, thus, linked with the fundamental • • --277-­ • • • • • • • • • conditions of the development of societies, and it shows that there are a decreasing number of collective beliefs and sentiments which are both collective enough and strong enough to take on a religious character .... The average intensity of the common conscience becomes pro­ gressively enfeebled .... The same law of regression ap­ plies to the representative element of the common con­ science quite as much as to the affective element (DL: 169-70) . It is interesting to note, finally, that Durkheim appeared ra­ ther sanguine about the progressive secularization of culture at this point. Let us now turn to the next stage in Durkheim's development of the paradigm of the primitive sacral complex. 2. The Second Phase: Durkheim's Breakthrough to a Sociology of Religion The second phase of Durkheim's developing interest in the sociology of religion is perhaps the most important and least known. This phase covers roughly the decade from 1895 to 1905. His last years at Bordeaux and first years at Paris were most creative--they were the "breakthrough" years. But since the bulk of Durkheim's efforts were invested during this time in teaching and building L'Annee sociologique, we still have great difficulty in bringing the depth and scope of these a­ chievements into clear focus. I must emphasize that this phase of development of Durkheim's concern with the creativity of the primitive sacral complex deserves more attention than it has yet received. For it was during this period that the foun­ dations (still often unperceived--see Chapter Four) of Durk­ heim's sociology of religion and knowledge were laid down, and detailed, inter-disciplinary research into the crucial role of the primitive sacral complex begun. l During this phase, the sociology of religion moved from a peripheral position, as mere­ ly an adjunct to his sociology of law and morality, to the cen­ ter stage of Durkheim's program for the human sciences. In short, during this fertile, but half--invisible period, Durkheim moved away from his earlier negative view of religious pheno­ mena toward viewing the sacral complex as the very womb, the creative matrix of human society, culture, and person. • • • • • • • • • • • --278-­ Space does not here permit detailed examination of all the documents which appear in rapid succession in this phase; we shall now merely note some highlights. While the end of this second phase may be movable, the beginning is more definite-­ 1895. For Durkheim himself acknowledged that his discovery of the works of the English anthropologists of religion, especial­ ly Robertson Smith, which were integral parts of his first lec­ ture course on religion in 1894-95, served as turning points in his career. Of this breakthrough to a sociology of religion, Steven Lukes observes: "The work of Robertson Smith and his school offered Durkheim an overall perspective on religion, which he then transformed in light of his own theoretical pre­ occupations" (1973:239). Durkheim himself noted: It was not until 1895 that I achieved a clear view of the essential role played by religion in social life. It was in that year that, for the first time, I found the means of tackling the study of religion sociologi­ cally. This was revelation to me. That course of 1895 marked a dividing line in the development of my thought, to such an extent that all my previous researches had to be taken up afresh in order to be made to harmonize with these new insights •••• [This reorientation] was entirely due to the studies of religious history which I had undertaken, and notably to the reading of the works of Robertson Smith and his school (in Lukes, 1973: 237) . Apparently, none of Durkheim's 1894-95 lecture notes survive (Lukes, 1973:238). However, it appears that Durkheim had found in Robertson Smith's theory of religion " ••• the means of tack­ ling the study of religion sociologically." Especially import­ ant, Lukes suggests, were Smith's " ••• emphasis on the social functions of totemic rituals and ••• the central idea of the divinization of the community" (1973:239; see also 238). Clear­ ly, much of Durkheim's later Elementary Forms was foreshadow­ ed in Smith's Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (see also Durkheim, PECM:180, and EF; see Chapter Four). The importance of Durkheim's breakthrough to a rudi­ mentary sociocultural theory of religious process cannot be exaggerated; for the new importance attached to religious symbols even began to make Durkheim alter his underlying cau­ sal model. It has not been sufficiently recognized that his • • • • • • • • • • • --279-­ growing understanding of religious processes led Durkheim to acknowledge the autonomization of collective representations. But this shift comes through very clearly in a book review in 1897 of Labriola's exposition of historical materialism. Durk­ heim explicitly rejected the Marxist claims, denied thdt his reductionism derived from Marxism, and insisted instead on the autonomization of collective representations, using religion as his prime example. Sociologists and historians are tending increasingly to reach common agreement that religion is the most primi­ tive of all social phenomena. All other manifestations of collective activity--law, morality, art, science, po­ litical formation, etc.--have emerged from it, by a ser­ ies of transformations. In the beginning, everything is religious .... It is indisputable that, at the outset, the economic factor is rudimentary, while religious life is, by contrast, luxuriant and all-pervasive. Why could it not follow from this, and is it not more probable, that that the economy depends much more upon religion than the former does upon the latter (in Giddens, 1972a:16l-2)? As Lukes (1973:62) and Jones (1974) note, this declaration re­ presents a decisive shift from Durkheim's position in 1886 when he maintained that " ... the role of the conscience collective is limited to acknowledging facts without producing them," and even his 1893 position vis-a-vis Fustel de Coulanges (DL:179). Thus, it was during the seminal 1897-99 period that Durkheim, under the new influence of sociology of religion, seeing that his causal model needed to be enlarged, first began to empha­ size the autonomization of collective representations and the significance of the sacral complex (see also Book Three, Part I). ! believe this coincidence to be more than accidental. Of this momentous shift, Lukes observes: "Largely as a result of his preoccupation with religion, he became more and more in­ terested in the sphere of beliefs and ideals, and in the so­ ciological explanation of the attribution of moral values" (1973:4l9) . In the same year, Durkheim published Suicide which al­ so emphasized the importance of "collective representations," and the role of religions in primitive and modern suicides. For example, in Book Three, Chapter One, after insisting that • • --280-­ • • • • • • • • • " collective tendencies have an existence of their own" (5:309), Durkheim outlined his theory of culture. He remark­ ed that "Religion is •.. the system of symbols by which a so­ ciety becomes conscious of itself; it is the characteristic way of thinking of collective existence" (5:312). Indeed, ear­ lier Durkheim had interpreted altruistic suicides in precise­ ly these terms. Altruistic suicide was used by Durkheim as an objective index revealing the nature of the social bond pecu­ liar to traditional societies rooted in ties of "blood and soil." The fact that the altruistic suicide regards self-sac­ rifice as obligatory--a moral duty and perhaps even a privi­ lege--signifies that the individual is here submerged in the "sacral-magical collective conscience. II Self-sacrifice, or the systematic eradication of the ego in certain religions, implies a state of "impersonalized altruism" which corresponds to the "pantheistic" structure of society itself. Since religion was the symbolic way in which society crystallized self-conscious­ ness, it follows, said Durkheim, that "mechanically integrated" societies, in which the individual counts for little, should express these social and cultural realities in pantheistic re­ ligious projections. But it was in the Annee sociologique, volume two (1897­ 1898), published in 1899, that Durkheim first explicitly an­ nounced his program of detailed research into the genetic-evo­ lutionary significance of the primitive sacral complex. In the preface to the second volume, as many have noted but few have developed, Durkheim stated: This year, as well as last, our analyses are headed by those concerning the sociology of religion. The accord­ ing of the first rank to this sort of phenomenon has produced some astonishment, but it is these phenomena which are the germ from which all others--or at least almost all others--are derived. Religion contains in itself from the very beginning, even if in an indistinct state, all the efments which in dissociating themselves from it, articulating themselves and combining with one another in a thousand ways, have given rise to the var­ ious manifestations of collective life. From myths and legends have issued forth science and poetry; from reli­ gious ornamentations and cults have come the plastic arts; from ritual practice were born law and morals. One can­ • • --281-­ • not understand our perception of the world, our philOSO­ phical conceptions of the soul, of immortality, of life, if one does not know the religious beliefs which are their primordial forms. Kinship started out as an es­ • sentially religious tie; punishment, contract, gift and homage are transformations of expiatory, contractual, communal, honorary sacrifices, and so on .... A great many problems change their aspects completely as soon as their connections with the sociology of religion are recognized. Our efforts must therefore be aimed at tra­ cing these connections (1960:350-51). And indeed, Durkheim's efforts and those of the Annee school were "aimed at tracing these connections" between modern social • and cultural phenomena and their origins in the primitive and archaic sacral complex. As Durkheim himself acknowledged of his own work: "My previous researches had to be taken up afresh in order to harmonize with these new insights," so too did Durk­ • heim expect his new "ideal type" of the sacral complex to re­ orient investigations in the human sciences. And the main site in which Durkheim worked out his program was the Annee itself. Indeed, in the same volume of the Annee in which his • seminal program was first announced, Durkheim also offered a tentative essay "On the Definition of Religious Phenomena." This lead article should be seen as Durkheim's first and ad­ mittedly preliminary attempt to " ... view religion as a social • phenomena, indeed the primitive social phenomena, from which all others subsequently emerged" (Lukes, 1973:240). Lukes rightly reports that Durkheim's approach to religion at this point was still "largely pre-ethnographic." • ... Durkheim had not yet become "saturated" with the technical and first hand literature, and in particu­ lar he was not yet, as he later became, a "veteran of Australian ethnology." Indeed, the greater part of Aus­ tralian ethnographic work, which aroused an immense a­ mount of interest among European scholars, really dated • from the later 1890's. At this early stage, Durkheim's approach was largely formal and rather simpliste: he worked out a number of hypotheses about~e nature of religion and its role in social life, and he set out a range of questions for the sociology of religion to con­ front. Subsequently, his treatment of relgion was to be • considerably more nuanced and complex, and in contact with a rich and detailed mass of empirical detail (1973: 240) . The results of Durkheim's deepening saturation in this "rich • • • • • • • • • • • • --282-­ and detailed" Australian ethnography as he sought to demon­ strate the generic and genetic-evolutionary primacy of the sacral complex began to appear in rapid succession thereaft­ er in ~'Annee sociologique. In 1898, there appeared the essay "La Prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines" (translated in 1963 by Sagarin). In 1899, as noted, there was his essay "On the Definition of Religious Phenomena." In 1900, Durkheim's development, extension, and refinement of his earlier argument concerning "religious criminality" and related topics appear­ ed under the title "Two Laws of Penal Evolution" (translated 1973 by Jones and Scull).l Also, in the school year 1900-01, Durkheim lectured for the first time on "Les Formes elemen­ taires de la religion." In 1902, the untranslated article "Sur Ie totemisme" appeared. In 1903 Durkheim and Hauss wrote the great monograph Primitive Classification (translated by Rodney Needham, 1963). In 1905, Durkheim published the essay "Sur l'organization matrimoniale des societies australiennes" (see also Bellah, 1959, Lukes, 1973). Truly, a most product­ ive period, with a major monograph appearing almost every year! Clearly, Durkheim was intent on elaborating the primi­ tive sacral complex as the central interpretive "ideal type" for the human sciences. However, in addition to these many important essays, Durkheim and his colleagues contributed a massive outpouring of book reviews on diverse subjects of in­ terest not just to sociology, but to all the sciences of man. Space does not here permit detailed review of this fascinating and seminal scholarship, 2 but Durkheim's fundamental outlines of the centrality of the sacral complex begin to emerge ra­ ther clearly. For example, the moral authority of certain be­ liefs and social practices take on the character of "sacred­ ness," and it is the moral community which is the carrier of legitimate structures of conscience and consciousness. The organizing opposition between "sacred" and "profane" appear­ ed in the article on defining religion in 1899. The embedded­ ness of primitive kinship bonds in sacral symbols, the root­ • • • • • • • • • • • --283-­ edness of social and legal obligations in religious rationales and magical formulas, the embeddedness of primitive logic in collective mythological symbolism, the compounding binary sys­ tem of symbolic equations being extended to all of existence, and so on and so forth, all first emerged during this highly creative period of group research into the significance of the sacral complex as the womb of society, culture, and person. For illustrative purposes, one of the most revealing shifts in Durkheim' s attitude toward the "repressiveness" or creativeness of the sacral complex can be found in his explan­ ations of the sacral bases of legal phenomena such as property, contract, taxes, and so on. These shifts are especially note­ worthy because they represent a clear continuity with Durk­ heim's earlier sociology of law, prior to the 1895 breakthrough. Durkheim developed these ideas in his often-repeated series of lectures "Physique generale des moeurs et du droit" which, as Lukes tells us, reached their definitive form in the 1898-1900 lecture series at Bordeaux (portions of these lectures are translated as Professional Ethics and Civic Morals). For exam­ ple, after defining the right of property as essentially rest­ ing on "the right to exclude others from use of things" (PECM: 142), Durkheim characteristically explained the origin of this specific right in sacral terms. For only the sacred can serve as the source of exclusionary taboo. Careful readers will note that here, as elsewhere, Durkheim often argued as much from an implied analogy as from historical fact • .•. the thing appropriated is a thing distinct from com­ mon property. Now this feature is also shared by all re­ ligious and sacred things. Whenever we have a religious ritual, the world over, the feature that distinguishes the sacreq entities is that they are withdrawn from gen­ eral circulation: they are separate and set apart. The common people cannot enjoy them. Those who have a kin­ ship, as it were, can alone have access to them--that is, those who are sacred as they are: the priests, the great, and the magistrates ...• It is these prohibitions that lie at the foundation of what is called taboo .... Taboo is the the setting apart of an object as something consecrated, as something belonging to the sphere of the divine. By virtue of this setting apart, it is forbidden to appro­ priate the object of taboo under pain of sacrilege .... We can see how close the connection is between this con­ • --284-­ cept and that of ownership. Around the thing appropria­ ted, as around the sacred thing, a vacuum formed .... • • • • .' • • • • Therefore, we are right in supposing that the origins of property are to be found in the nature of certain religious beliefs. Since the effects are identical, they can in all liklihood be attributed to similar cau­ ses (PECM:143-4). Taxes also, Durkheim suggested, may have a sacral ori­ gin. For instance: ... the sacrilege that a man thinks he is committing against the gods by the very fact of tilling and break­ ing up the soil is, in truth, committed against society, since society is the reality hidden behind these mythi­ cal concepts. It is therefore, in a way, to society that man makes his sacrifices and offers up the victim.... These sacrifices, these first fruits of all kinds, are the earliest form of taxes. First, they are debts paid to the gods; they then become tithes paid to the priests, and this tithe is already a regular tax that later on is to pass into the hands of the lay authorities. These rites of atonement and propitiation finally become what amounts to a tax, although unsuspected. The germ of the institution is there, however, and is destined to devel­ op in the future (PECM:162-3). Durkheim offered a similar genealogy for the emergence of the legal institution of consensual contract. Originally, he he contended, sacred oaths were the binding force for the ex­ change of obligations. "The consensual contract is a contract by solemn ritual" (PECM:194). The wills can effect a bond only on condition of declar­ ing themselves. The declaration is made by words. There is something in words that is real, natural, and living and they can be endowed with a sacred force, thanks to which they compel and bind those who pronounce them. It is enough for them to be pronounced in ritual form and in ritual conditions. They take on a sacred quality by that very act. One means of giving them this sacred char­ acter is the oath, or invocation of a divine being. Through this invocation the divine being becomes the guarantor of the promise exchanged. Thereby the promise becomes compulsive, under threat of sacred penalties of known gravity. For instance, each party pronounces some phrase that binds him and a formula by which he calls down upon his head certain divine curses if he should fail in his undertaking .••• sacrifices and magical rites of all kinds reinforce still further the coercive force of the words uttered (PECM:182). Indeed, it is interesting to note that, even in our own secular­ ized era, legal oaths retain the character of a divinely guaran­ • • • • • • • • • • • • --285-­ teed conditional self-curse (eg. swearing on the Bible). The importance of primitive sprachlogik (see also Cassirer, 1953­ 1955-1957) and ritual stereotyping in undergirding contracts is developed further by Durkheim in terms of Roman law and culture. This, then, seems to be the or1g1n of contracts made in all due and solemn formality. One of their features is that they are binding only if the parties make an under­ taking by a formula, solemn and agreed, which cannot be evaded. It is the formula which binds. This is the dis­ tinctive sign by which we recognize a main feature of magical and sacred formulas. The juridical formula is only a substitute for sacred fOrmalities and rites.-­ When certain definite words, arranged in a definite se­ quence, possess a moral influence which is lost if they are different or merely pronounced in a different se­ quence, we can be certain that they possess or have pos­ sessed a sacred significance and that they derive their peculiar powers from sacred causes. For it is only the sacred phrase which has this effect upon things and up­ on human beings. With the Romans especially, one fact tends to show clearly that the origin of the contract had a sacred character; this is the custom of the sacra­ mentum. When two contracting parties were in disagree­ ment on the nature of their respective rights and du­ ties, they deposited a sum of money in a temple ... this was the sacramentum. The one who lost his case also for­ feited the smn he had deposited. This means that he was fined to the benefit of the deity, which argues that his project was held to be an offense against the gods. These gods were, then, party to the contract*(PECM:182-3). Durkheim then sketched out the stages in the evolution of the rights of contract as it became progressively secularized and assumed its present form. Since, again, Durkheim saw that "juridical formalism is only a substitute for sacred formali­ ties and rites," we see that: Had it not been for the existence of the contract by solemn ritual, there would have been no notion of the contract by mutual consent. Nor would there have been any idea that the word of honor, which is fugitive and can be revoked by anyone, could be thus secured only by magic and sacred processes .•.. The binding £orce, the action, are supplied from without. It is religious beliefs that brought about the synthesis; once formed, other causes sustained it, because it served a purpose (PECM:194). Illustrations could be multiplied, but perhaps these suffice to indicate the brilliance of Durkheim's insight into • --286-­ • the sacral origins of legal, institutional, and other cultural forms, and the enduring fascination of his description of cer­ tain crucial sociocultural processes. We now see the nature and power of Durkheim's new interpretive perspective, and how far he had come, after the breakthrough of 1895, in exploring the cultural creativeness and evolutionary centrality of the • primitive sacral womb. Indeed, it is, perhaps, not too much to suggest that Durkheim's emerging sociology of religion rest­ ed on this crucial paradigm. • 3. The Third Phase: The Primitive Sacral Complex as Womb of Society and Culture Durkheim's third phase centers, of course, on The Ele­ mentary Forms of the Religious Life, published in 1912. In a • very real sense this masterpiece represented the culmination of Durkheim's program announced in the preface to the second Annee sociologique, which was first carried out by Durkheim himself and his co-workers in the pages of this famous "col­ • lective representation" of the Durkheimian school in France. Early in The Elementary Forms, we see Durkheim proclaiming: "Today we are beginning to realize that law, morals, and even scientific thought itself were born of religion, were for a • long time confounded with it, and have remained penetrated with its spirit" (EF:87); he then proceeded to substantiate these claims in detail. Indeed, the very core of Durkheim's exhaustive examination of Australian aboriginal religion as • the site for his crucial experiment into the genetic and evo­ lutionary creativity of the sacral complex was his premise that only primitive religion was capable of imposing moral and conceptual unity upon empirical diversity; in short, of • transforming "chaos" into "cosmos." Thus, primitive rite and myth provided the crucial foundation, the template, as it were, which subsequent cultural forms only elaborated. "The funda­ mental categories of thought ... and science are of religious • origin .... All the great social institutions have been born in religion" (EF:466). • • • • • • • • • • • --287-­ This third and culminating period opens roughly around 1906, with Durkheim's lecture course on "La Religion: Origines" (see Stanner, 1967:225; Lukes, 1973:581). By this time, Durk­ heim had become thoroughly "saturated" with the ethnographic literature on Australia and North America. In 1907, Durkheim delivered his paper "The Determination of Moral Facts" in which he, as Parsons noted years ago, widened out his moral theory to include desirability as well as obligation. In 1909, Durkheim published the first part of his forthcoming Formes Elementaires. In this regard, Stanner tells us: Durkheim at first intended to publish under the title Elementary Forms of Thought and Religious Life. In 1909 three parts appeared as articles with titles consonant with that intention. The introduction, plus a part o­ mitted from the book, was printed ... as 'Sociologie religieuse et theorie de la connaisance,' and versions of the second and third chapters •.. as "Examen criti­ que des systemes classiques sur les origines de la pen­ see religieuse.' I have not seen any explanation of the changes of title, but the effect was to obscure the se­ cond though in no way secondary object of study: an at­ tempt to 'renovate the theory of knowledge' by a new ex­ amination of the categories. This was unfortunate because the book's longer perspective went far beyond religion. It looked in the direction of a grander sociology based on what might be called a natural positivist epistemolo­ gy ..•. It was by means of this epistemology that in his view religion, morals, and even science could be concil­ iated (1967:227). Further, Stanner, Lukes, and Giddens, among others, have all seen the importance of Durkheim's acknowledgement, early in The Elementary Forms, that in his first attempt at defining religious phenomena in the Annee article fifteen years years earlier, he had stressed the obligatory aspect to the ne­ glect of religious ideas. Doubtless, this early stress on "con­ straint" came from his positivist emphasis, not so much on ex­ ternal indices, as upon the identification of religion with the "repressiveness" of archaic legal sanctions. In 1912, Durk­ heim said: It is by this that that our present definition is con­ nected to the one that we have already proposed.••. In this work, we defined religious beliefs exclusively by their obligatory character; but, as we shall show, the obligation evidently comes from the fact that these be­ • • --288-­ • liefs are the possession of a group which imposes them upon its members. The two definitions are thus in large part the same. If we have thought it best to propose a new one, it is because the first was too formal, and neglected the content of the religious representations too much (EF:63, #68). Now, we shall not focus here on the sacred/profane op­ • position (but see Chapter Four), but rather on the ability of the sacred principle to organize and energize the symbolic field. It is through the notion of sacred forces, invisible yet immanent in the world, Durkheim argued, that men are first able • to impose conceptual order upon the world--to mold empirical diversity into moral unity. Surely, Durkheim argued, there is • nothing in the sensation of the lone, isolated ego which can supply this ordering principle. No, it~religious symbolism. In a most revealing and significant statement in his important ad­ dress "Judgments of Value and Judgments of Reality" in 1911, Durkheim observed: Collective thought changes everything it touches. It throws down the barriers of the realms of nature and • combines contraries; it reverses what is called the natural hierarchy of being, makes disparity equal, and differentiates the similar. In a word, society substi­ tutes for the world revealed to us by our senses a dif­ ferent world that is the projection of the ideals of so­ ciety itself (SP:94-S). • This is the master thesis underlying Durkheim's Elementary Forms. Now, early in his masterwork, Durkheim discerned the sacral origins of art and writing in the totemic symbols and • designs inscribed on the churinga and other sacred objects. • It cannot be doubted that these designs and paintings also have an esthetic character; here it is the first form of art. Since they are also •.. a written lang­ uage, it follows that the origins of design and those of writing are one. It even becomes clear that men com­ menced designing, not so much to fix upon wood or stone beautiful forms which charm the senses, as to trans­ late his thought into matter (EF:149). Further, Durkheim suggested that the original anchors • of kinship relations lay in a sacral bond. Of course, in Ele­ mentary Forms Durkheim saw totemism as symbolizing this social­ sacral link. • • --289-­ • • • • • • • • • For the members of a single clan are not united to each other either by a common habitat, or by common blood, as they are not necessarily consanguineous and are frequently scattered over different parts of the tribal territory. Their unity comes solely from their having the same relations with the same categories of things, their practising the same rites, or in a word, from their participating in the same totemic cult. Thus, totemism and the clan mutually imply each other (EF:194) . Indeed, it is interesting to note that one of his most succinct summaries of the sacral basis of the kinship bond appeared in his lectures on the development of law and morals. All members of the same clan have within them, as it were, a particle of the divine being from which the clan is supposed to be descended. Thus, they bear the mark of a sacred symbol, and this is why they are bound to be defended, to have their death avenged, and so on (PECM:178). The evolution of thought--indeed, the very categories of logical thought itself--were seen to be of sacral origin. In other words, "logical evolution is closely connected with religious evolution" (EF:267). For a long time it has been known that the first sys­ tems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of reli­ gious origin. There is no religion that is not a cos­ mology at the same time that it is a speculation upon divine things. If philosophy and the sciences were born of religion, it is because religion began by taking the place of the sciences and philosophy (EF:2l). But how could this be so? What enabled religion to act as the womb of society and culture? The answer is to be found in the master thesis of Durkheim's stated earlier from 1911. The sym­ bolic potency of religious representations to embrace both ma­ terial and moral realms, emotion and cognition--this ability to fuse opposites, separate similarities, in short, to turn empirical diversity into moral and conceptual unity--it was this ability which lay at the heart of religion's unique po­ wer and evolutionary significance. We are now able to explain the origin of the ambiguity of religious forces as they appear in history, and how they are physical as well as human, moral as well as material. They are moral powers because they are made up entirely of the impressions this moral being, the • • --290-­ • • '. • • • • • • group, arouses in ... its individual members ..•. Their authority is only one form of the moral ascendancy of society over its members. But, on the other hand, since they are conceived of under material forms, they could not fail to be regarded as closely related to material things. Therefore, they dominate the two worlds. Their residence is in men, but at the same time, they are the vital principles of things. They animate minds and dis­ cipline them, but it is also they who make plants grow and animals reproduce. It is this double nature which has enabled religion to be like the womb from which come all the leading germs of human civilization. Since it has been made to embrace all of reality, the physi­ cal world as well as the moral one, the forces that move bodies as well as those that move minds have been con­ ceived in a religious form. That is how the most diverse methods and practices, both those that make possible the continuation of the moral life (law, morals, beaux-arts) and those serving the material life (the natural, tech­ nical, and practical sciences) are either directly or indirectly derived from religion * (EF:254-55). Because the primitive religious force is represented as a form of energy, a sort of "sacred electricity" (Weber used similar analogies) which is highly fluid and flows in and out of things, inevitably it acts to "con-fuse" them. Sacred ener­ gies overflow, they are "contagious," as Durkheim observed; and whatever they touch becomes transformed in the same degree by this "sacred contagion" (see also Chapter Four). All things tcuched ~ the same sacred forces are conceived as possessing the same essence--this becomes the elementary classificatory principle. We have seen the facility with which the primitive con­ fuses kingdoms and identifies the most heterogeneous things, men, animals, plants, stars, etc. Now we see one of the causes which has contributed the most to fa­ cilitating these confusions. Since religious forces are eminently contagious, it is constantly happening that the same principle animates very different objects equally; it passes from some into others as the result of either a simple material proximity or of even a sup­ erficial similarity. It is thus that men, animals, plants, and rocks come to have the same totem: the men because they bear the name of the animal; the animals because they bring the totemic emblem to mind; the plants because they nourish these animals; the rocks because they mark the place where the ceremonials are celebrated. Now, religious forces are therefore consi­ dered the source of all efficacy; so beings having one sinqle religious principle ought to pass as having the • • --291-­ • • • • • • • • • same essence, and as differing from one another only in secondary characteristics. This is why it seemed quite natural to arrange them in a single category, and to re­ gard them as mere variations of the same class, trans­ mutable into one another. When this relation has been established, it makes the phenomena of contagion appear under a new aspect. Taken by themselves, they seem quite foreign to the logical life. Is their effect not to mix and confuse beings, in spite of their natural differences? But we have seen that these confusions and participations have played a role of the highest utility in logic; they have served to bind to­ gether things which sensation leaves apart from one ano­ ther. So it is far from true that contagion, the source of these connections and confusions, is marked with that fundamental irrationality that one is inclined to attri­ bute it at first. It has opened the way for the scienti­ fic explanations of the future * (EF:364-S). Thus, just as egos are moralized into forming a society, so too is the world moralized, unified, made into an intelligible cos­ mos through the medium of sacral symbolism. I repeat: sacral energies, symbolizing the invisible yet "essential" world, serve as the prime instrument of moral and conceptual linkage. For instance, Durkheim proposed that the scientific no­ tion of "force," as that of "causality," is derived, ultimate­ ly, from religious notions such as "mana," the Sioux equiva­ lent "wakan," etc.; in short, "charismatic" energies flowing, directing, and eventually condensing into spirits and gods. lilt is the first form of the idea of force" (EF:232). In fact, the wakan plays the same role in the world, as the Sioux conceive it, as the one played by the for­ ces with which science explains the diverse phenomena of nature .... This, however, does not mean that it is thought of as an exclusively physical energy; on the contrary ... we shall see the elements going to make up this idea are taken from the most diverse realms. But this very compositenessof its nature enables it to be utilized as a universal principle of explanation. It is from it that all life comes ..•. The wakan is the cause of all the movements which take place in the uni­ verse .... When the Iroquois says that the life of all nature is the product of conflicts aroused between the unequally intense orencaof the different beings, he only expresses, in his own language, this modern idea that the the world is a system of forces limiting and containing each other and making an equilibrium...• So the idea of force is of religious origin. It is from religion that it has been borrowed, first by philosophy, then by the sciences (EF:232-3). • • • • • • • • • • • • --292-­ Moreover, because the moral and the material, the cul­ tural and the natural, are joined in a " ..• solid system whose parts are united and vibrate sympathetically," the totemic sys­ tem becomes a cosmological and moral system simultaneously. Totemism, as the most primitive religion Durkheim thought could be discovered, offers us a rudimentary explanation of the uni­ verse. "To a greater or less extent, all known religions have been systems of ideas which tend to embrace the universality of things, and to give us a complete representation of the world" (EF:165). For the Australian, things themselves, everything which is in the universe, are a part of the tribe; they. are considered elements of it, and so to speak, regular mem­ bers of it; just like men they have a determined place in the general schema of society •.•. All known things will thus be arranged in a sort of tableau or systematic classification embracing the whole of nature (EF:166). Thus, the men of the clan and the things which are clas­ sified in it form by their union a solid system, all of whose parts are unified and vibrate sympathetically. This organization, which at first may have appeared to us as purely logical, is at the same time moral. A single prin­ ciple animates it and makes its unity: this is the totem •••• All the beings arranged in a single clan, whether men, animals, plants, or inanimate objects, are merely forms of the same totemic being .••• All are really of the same flesh in the sense that all partake of the na­ ture of the totemic animal (EF:175). Thus, religion is seen as the great, original unifying princi­ ple in Durkheim's model of the sacral womb. In contrast, for example, to Levy-Bruhl, who posited a "pre-logical" mentality, a non-Aristotelian logic, Durkheim posited the psychic unity of mankind, and thus perceived the fundamental sources of identity, of unity in diversity. This could never come from the senses alone . ••• there is nothing in experience which could suggest these connections and confusions. As far as the obser­ vation of the senses is able to go, everything is dif­ ferent and disconnected. Nowhere do we see beings mix­ ing their natures and metamorphosing themselves into each other. It is therefore necessary that some excep­ tionally powerful cause should have intervened to trans­ figure reality in such a way as to make it appear under an aspect that is not really its own. • --293-­ • It is religion that was the agent of this transforma­ tion; it is religious beliefs that have substituted for the world, as it is perceived by the senses, ano­ ther different one. This is well shown by the case of • totemism. The fundamental thing in this religion is that the men of the clan and the different beings whose form the totemic emblems reproduce pass as being made of the same essence. Now when this belief was once ad­ mitted, the bridge between the different kingdoms was already built. The man was represented as a sort of animal or plant; the plants and animals were thought of as the relatives of men, or, rather, all these be­ ings, so different for the senses, were thought of as participating in a single nature. So this remarkable • aptitude for confusing things that seem to be obvious­ ly distinct comes from the fact that the first forces with which the human intellect peopled the world were elaborated by religion. Since these were made up of elements taken from the different kingdoms, men con­ ceived of a principle common to the most heterogeneous • things, which thus became endowed with a sole and sing­ le essence (EF:26B). Against the inevitable objections, Durkheim acknowledged: It is true that this logic is disconcerting for us. Yet we must be careful not to depreciate it: howsoever • crude it may appear to us, it has been an aid of the greatest importance in the intellectual evolution of • humanity. In fact, it is through it that the first ex­ planation of the world has been made possible ...• So it is far from true that this mentality has no con­ nection with ours. Our logic was born of this logic .... Between the logic of religious thought and that of scientific thought there is no abyss (EF:269,270,27l). Indeed, this was Durkheim's constant refrain throughout his Elementary Forrns--there is no gap in continuity between primi­ tive and modern thought (see especially Horton, 1973). This • thesis provides the evolutionary superstructure upon which his great masterpiece was organized. When shall we finally come to recognize his central intention was to reveal the generic and genetic-evolutionary primacy of the primitive sacral complex? • That this was indeed Durkheim's core thesis can be seen from a most revealing contrast, drawn by Durkheim himself, between his own work and that of his colleague Levy-Bruhl in a book review which appeared in 1913 in L'Annee sociologique. • Although he acknowledged that they agreed on many points, most notably that "primitive mentality is essentially religious," Durkheim also took pains to distance himself from Levy-Bruhl's • • • • • • • • • • • --294-­ "contrast/inversion" schema, as Horton (1973) has termed the latter's description of the passage from primitive to modern thought. We consider, by contrast, that these two forms of human mentality, however different they may be, far from de­ riving from different sources, are created one by the 'other, and are two moments in the same evolution. We have shown, in point of fact, that the most essential ideas of the human mind--ideas of time, space, type and form, force and causality, and personality--those in short, to which philosophers have given the name of "categories," and which dominate all logical activity, were elaborated within the very center of religion. Science has borrowed them from religion. There is no gulf between these two stages in the intellectual life of mankind .... Although, therefore, human mentality has changed and evolved over the centuries in relation to society, the different types which it has successively manifested have each given rise to the other. The high­ er and more recen~ forms are not opposed to the lower and more primitive forms, but are created out of the latter (in Giddens, 1972a:248-9). Once one grasps the depth and meaning of Durkheim's vision, the whole world becomes transformed; one experiences the light dawning, the gestalt switch which constitutes scientific revo­ lutions. For that which had been once outcast, especially by Durkheim himself and his Enlightenment brethren, I mean the un­ intelligible, chaotic, and even frightening pole in the posi­ tivist faith--namely, the past and religion--were now rehabili­ tated, transformed into meaning and historical order. Levy­ Bruhl, who also overemphasized the rationality of "modern man," simply had not yet broken with Enlightenment dogma. But Durk­ heim had, at least in his own mind, effectively reconciled re­ ligion and reason; and the prime alchemical instrument was the creativeness of the sacral womb. Primitive man brought order out of chaos through myth and ritual. While many prepared the way, this was one of the most crucial aspects of Durkheim's revolution in the human sciences (see also Lukes, 1973:474-5). Now, it must be remembered that the creativeness of the primitive sacral complex was evolutionary as well as gen­ etic. Indeed, it was his evolutionism which first led Durkheim to discover the creativenss of primitive religion in the first place. For example, as we noted in review of The Division of • • --295-­ Labor, Durkheim had already recognized the close relation be­ tween the evolution of the collective and individual conscien­ • ce, and the evolution of the notions of the gods. For, much like Weber in his profound sketch in The Sociology of Religion (1963), Durkheim outlined the progressive passage from clan- based exclusionary socio-religious bonds to universalistic or • civilizational symbolic bonds. Originally, said Durkheim, to­ temism served as the sacral base of the kinship bond, for only those who had been similarly transformed in the ecstatic "col­ lective effervescence" and the communion sacrifice, and who • shared similar ancestral genealogies, could bond themselves together in a functioning cult. But the commensal barriers of clan particularism barred passage to a tribal or inter-socie­ tal symbolic bonds. Like Weber, then, Durkheim's key analyti­ • cal variables here were the obstacles and facilitating chan­ nels for the progressive passages from particularistic to uni­ versalistic social and cultural bonds. For example, in speaking of clan totemism, he proposed: • ••• it is the nature of the social environment which has imposed this particularism. In fact, as long as totemism remains at the basis of the cultural organi­ zation, the clan keeps an autonomy in the religious society which, though not absolute, it always very • marked •••• The group of things attributed to each clan, which are a part of it in the same way the men are, have the same individuality and autonomy. Each of them is represented as irreducible into similar groups, as separated from them by a break of continuity, and as constituting a distinct realm. Under these circumstan­ • ces, it would never occur to one that these heterogen­ eous worlds were different manifestations of one and • the same fundamental force: on the contrary, one might suppose that each of them corresponded to an organi­ cally different mana whose action could not extend be­ yond the clan and the circle of things attributed to it. The idea of a single and universal mana could be born only at the moment when the tribal religion de­ • veloped above that of the clans and absorbed them more or less completely. It is along with the feeling of tri­ bal unity that the feelings of the substantial unity of the world awakens •••• Totemism is essentially a federa­ tive religion which cannot go beyond a certain point of centralization without ceasing to be itself (EF:22S-6). Having noted the resistance of clan particularism to extension of the socio-religious bond, Durkheim next explored • • --296-­ • • • • • • • • • some special channels which facilitated the spread of "reli­ gious internationalism." Cross-clan sexual totemism, tribal in­ itiation rites stemming from the "organization of the tribe in­ to phatries, matrimonial classes ... and the exogamic inter­ dictions attached to them" (EF: 319), become "veri table tribal insti tutions." Mythologies grow up around special heroes or sponsoring ancestors of these intra-tribal institutions. Such gods struggled, as the clans themselves struggled for structur­ al and cultural supremacy; in the clash, and in the new order of reconciliation, one god emerged supreme . ... the authority of each of these supreme gods is not limited to a single tribe; it is recognized equally by a number of neighboring tribes .•.. There are very few gods for a relatively extended geographical area. So the cults of which they are the object have an inter­ national character. It even happens sometimes that myth­ ologies, intermingle, combine and make mutual borrowings (EF:325). The passage from the ancestral geniuses to the idea of a tribal god was accomplished through the medium of the civilizing he­ roes as a transitionary third term (EF: 328). Here: •.• the clans were, in a sense, the fragments of the divine body. Now is this not just another way of say­ ing that the great god is the synthesis of all the to­ tems and consequently, the personification of the tri­ bal unity? •• Thus an international mythology was es­ tablished, of which the great god was quite naturally the essential element ••.. So his name passed to it ••.• The internationalization of the totems opened the way for that of the great god•••. This culminating idea is united without any interruption to the crudest beliefs which we analyzed to start with. In fact, the great tri­ bal god is only an ancestral spirit who finally won a preeminent place. The ancestral spirits are only enti­ ties forged in the image of the individual souls whose origin they are destined to explain. The souls, in their turn, are only the form taken by the impersonal forces which are found at the basis of totemism, as the indi­ vidualize themselves in the human body. The unity of the system is as great as its complexity (EF:332). Finally, again emphasizing the importance of "religious cosmopolitanism" in extending the social bond from the sub-so­ cietal to the civilizational level, and consequently, in help­ ing to build universalistic and universalizable structures of conscience and consciousness, Durkheim concludes: • ----------.---­ • • • • • • • • • • --297-­ So it is far from true that religious internationalism is a peculiarity of the most recent and advanced reli­ gions. From the dawn of history, religious beliefs have manifested a tendency to overflow out of one strictly limited political society; it is as though they had a natural aptitude for crossing frontiers, and for diffu­ sing and internationalizing themselves. Of course, there have been peoples and times when this spontaneous apti­ tude has been held in check by opposed social necessi­ ties; but this does not keep it from being real and ... very primitive (EF:326; see also 473-4). In sum, I submit that, almost a decade and a half after first announcing his program, Durkheim had demdStrated the gen­ eric and genetic-evolutionary significance of the primitive sa­ cral complex as the womb of society, culture, and person to the several human sciences. Should we not now, after many decades of nelgect, turn our attention to Durkheim's revolution in the human sciences?l D. Shifts in the Connotational Load Carried ~ the Term "Reli­ gion" in Durkheim'~ System of Sociology Paradigmatic terms often depend for their symbolic poten­ cy on a series of connotations which they accumulate over the years. In general, the greater the connotational load, the great­ er the number of diverse meanings a paradigmatic term may em­ brace. Indeed, we often witness the "proteanization" of para­ digms, of symbolically charged terms as they become capable of embracing myriad meanings, and thus, of transforming empirical diversity into moral and conceptual unity. Seen in this light, the potency of Durkheim's sociology of religion depended, to a large extent, upon the multiplicity of meanings or connotation­ al load which it carried. Thus, perhaps it would be helpful if we attempted to sort out some of the separable meanings of the term "religion" which Durkheim managed to conflate, or tie to­ gether. The first and most general way in which Durkheim utili­ zed the term "religion" was in the common sense meaning of the term--he variously spoke of "religion as such," "religion pro­ perly considered," and so on. This everyday, unreconstructed connotation implied the usual elements of sacredness, cosmic • • --298-­ principles or divinities directing life, attempts by men to represent and communicate with these generative and directive • forces, the problems of evil, institutions and religious spe­ cialists--in short, the system of reciprocal relations between macrocosm and microcosm. Indeed, the key elements of Durkheim's explicit definition of religion--namely, sacredness and the • moral community (Lukes, 1973)--centered on just these general­ly accepted meanings of "religion as such." However, it was precisely against these generalized background connotations that Durkheim directed his initial po­ • sitivist revision of the meaning and referent of religious sym­bolism and action. As a positivist, Durkheim ruled out of court --even before proceedings began--the usual theological and meta­ physical claims put forward by most religions. For he proposed: • [Men] invent by themselves the idea of these powers • with which they feel themselves in connection, and from that, we are able to catch a glimpse of the way in which they were led to represent them under forms that are really foreign to their nature and to trans­ figure them by thought (EF:239-40). References could be multiplied; but Durkheim never wavered from his positivist denial of a transcendental meaning to religion. l Indeed, such transcendental truth claims had to be rejected out • of hand, for as the French moral and intellectual reformers well knew, such "essentialist" appeals blocked their own "laic" program to construct an "existential" conscience and conscious­ ness. Against the dominant claims of those wayward incumbents • of "office charisma" (to utilize l'1eber' s term) who maintained a monopoly over definitive interpretation of the "Book of Reve",,:, lation," the French and Latin "laic" moral reformers and pro­ phets raised the existential claims of "personal charisma" and • the certainties to be read in the "Book of. Nature." Thus, in short, in the modern world religion became reduced to morality, and theology to anthroposociology. • I cannot here enter into a detailed examination of Durk­ heim's positivist reduction of religious phenomena. Indeed, the question is most complex, and Durkheim's treatment often surpri­ singly subtle. But let us agree that any adequate explanation of human action must include both a set of interpretive syrnbol­ • • • • • • • • • • • • --299-­ ic equations by which one sphere or level is to be linked with another, and a series of transformation terms which link consti­ tutive processes. In these terms, the Marxist, Durkheimian, Freudian, Weberian, functionalist, structuralist interpreta­ tions, to mention only some of the leading contenders, all meet the basic criteria of in-depth interpretations of human action. However, at least one other crucial interpretive canon should be immediately introduced--namely, the phenomenological injunc­ tion to attempt to discern the multiple meanings actors them­ selves bestow upon their own actions. Clearly, from the various "distortive" perspectives, the stated intentions of those who generate and sustain religious action can and must be set aside in favor of "lower levels" (the spatial metaphor is revealing), the "unconscious" or "latent functions." Doubtless, there is much that cannot be explained in terms of "conscious" intention; there is much that escapes us, and which must be imputed by "outside" observers. But what, then, is to be the relation be­ tween "unconscious" and "conscious" levels, between "latent" and "manifest functions," between "sub" and "superstructures?" This fundamental dilemma is analogous to the problem faced by physicists and neurophysiologists in relating the so-called "primary" and "secondary qualities." On what grounds, for instance, did Durkheim claim that " ••• the error concerns the letter of the symbol employed, not the reality of the fact symbolized" (EF:299). It has not suffi­ ciently emphasized to this point that the special method which allowed Durkheim to transmute base theism into sociological gold--which allowed him to acknowledge that " ••. I can only add that I myself am quite indifferent to this choice [between God and society as the religious referent], since I see in the Divinity only society transfigured and symbolically expressed" [1906] (SP:52)--was an ingenious and unreflective use of ana­ ~. This can be seen most clearly in his lectures on the sacral and magical bases for the origin and evolution of such legal categories as property, contract, and so forth. For ex­ ample, Durkheim argued that there was a fundamental similarity between the private appropriation of an object or place and • --300-­ • • • • • • • • • • the rather unusual "set apartness" of "sacred" things and pla­ ces. Only rarely did he enunciate one of his most fundamental interpretive principles: "Since the effects ~ identical, they can in all liklihood be attributed to the same causes" (PECM: 143-4) • Inevitably, however, the "reductionistic" position in­ volves one in various unforeseen difficulties. As William Kolb (1953), Evans-Pritchard (1965), Ricoeur (1970), and many others have pointed out over the years, if people did not believe in the reality and efficacy of their actions, they simply would not pursue them; as a consequence, the "distortive" theorists would be deprived of their complex and ingenious sets of inter­ pretive symbolic equations. Unwittingly, Durkheim himself ack­ nowledged this dilennna years ago: "It is undoubtedly true that if they were able to see that these influences which they feel emanate from society, then the mythological system of interpre­ tations would never be born" (EF:239). Nevertheless, he still insisted on the unique truth of his own systematic insight: "But social action follows ways that are too circuitous and obscure, and employs psychical mechanisms that are too complex. to allow the ordinary observer to see when it comes" (EF:239). Lukes reports that in 1914, at a conference, Durkheim was ask­ ed directly this question by Gustave Belot: Durkheim, Belot insisted, was (despite his claims to the contrary), maintaining that all religions were false, in so far as they did not accept his own theory. Who, asked Belot, would continue to pray, if he knew he was praying to no one, but merely addressing a col­ lectivity that was not listening? Where, he continued: 'is the man who would continue to take part in commun­ ion if he believed that it was no more than a mere sym­ bol, and that there was nothing real in it' (1973:5l8)? Doubtless there are many subtleties not addressed here, but, ultimately this dilemma comes down to the fact that even the "distortive" theorists who reduce religion down to the "lower levels" must end up by laying claim to some special dispensa­ tion for their own uniquely inspired alchemies. So tenuous do these alchemies become sometimes, so dependent are they upon the special faiths which inspired them, that they all run the very real risk, as Raymond Aron remarked of Durkheim's inter­ • --301-­ pretation, of "making their object vanish" (1970:52). And, of course, if one does not succeed, any of the other contending • reductions will only be to glad to assist in making their com­ petitors' objects of interpretation vanish. Indeed, few have remarked upon the irony of this cacophany of competing "ulti­ mate interpretations" (but see Ricoeur, 1975); perhaps we • would be best advised to set each against the other, and let the Hobbesian struggle of each against all resolve the "battle royal" of the reductionists. In sum, Durkheim must be consider­ ed a positivist whose central problem in this regard was to • " ..• rediscover the reality of religion after having elimina­ ted the supernatural from it" (Aron, 1970:51). Further, besid­ es eliminating the generic intention from religious action and the prime referent 'of religious symbolism, Durkheim added the • characteristic historical charge, stemming from the various "Enlightenments," that religion traditionally held man in in­ tellectual and moral "servitude;" that religions, in short, were always, by their very nature, "repressive." Indeed, as • noted before, in any all-embracing cosmological system " ••• law which is agreed to be the word of God Himself cannot fail to be repressive" (DL:141). Thus, the initial thrust of Durk­ heim's critical sociology of religion was typical for his day; • it coincides with the usual "Enlightenment" charges that "reli­ gion is neither good nor true," as Benton Johnson has lucidly summarized this position. However, after saying all this, it is important to re­ • cognize that from this point on Durkheim parted company with his anti-metaphysical, anti-clerical, rationalist "Enlighten­ ment" brethren. His dialectical genius as one of the great mo­ dern moral philosophers takes over; for Durkheim next mounted • an equally ingenious "rescue campaign" to "save the phenomena" of religion. Indeed, is it not curious that neither of the twin architects of the modern sociology of religion (the other being the "religiously unmusical" Max Weber) themselves believ­ • ed in the reality of religious action, only in its human signi­ ficance? Instead of wholly setting aside religion as neither good ("repressive") nor true ("superstition, the lie of the • • • • • • • • • • • --302-­ priests ll ), Durkheim attempted to transmute religious thought and action into acceptable metaphors and beneficial consequen­ ces. His first step was to insist that religion cannot simply be a total illusion, because all men have believed in it in one form or another throughout history. Thus, to refute those IIdistortive ll theorists who argue that religion is illusion and bad, Durkheim appealed to the universality of religious beliefs. lilt remains incomprehensible that humanity should have remain­ ed obstinate in these errors through the ages, for experience should have very quickly proven them false ll (EF: 257) . The second stage in Durkheim's positivist and IIl a ic ll program to II save the phenomena ll of religion without its meta­ physical and hierocratic base, was rooted in the very real in­ sight that it is the II moral communityll which is the cultural carrier of intellectual and moral legitimate authority, of, in a word, IIsacredness.1I From our point of view, these difficulties vanish. Reli­ gion ceases to be an inexplicable hallucination and takes a foothold in reality. In fact, we can say that the be­ liever is not deceived when he believes in the existence of a moral power upon which he depends and from which he receives all that is best in himself: this power ex­ ists, it is society. t~en the Australian is carried out­ side himself and feels a new life flowing within him whose intensity surprises him, he is not the dupe of an illusion; this exaltation is real and is really the ef­ fect of forces outside of and superior to the individual. It is true that he is wrong in thinking that this in­ crease of vitality is the work of a power in the form of some animal or plant. But this error is merely in re­ gard to the letter of the symbol ••• and not in regard to the fact of its existence. Behind these figures and metaphors ••• there is a concrete and living reality. Thus, religion acquires a meaning and a reasonableness that the most intransigent rationalist cannot misunder­ stand (EF:257). Durkheim thus carne to see religion as the prime symbolic medi um by which societies first attained self-consciousness of them­ selves as a group. IIBefore all, it is a system of ideas with which the individuals represent to themselves the society of which they are members, and the obscure but intimate relations which they have with it ll (EF:257). Or as Giddens lucidly sum­ marizes: IIReligion is the symbolic self-consciousness of so­ • • --303-­ ciety, but in a form which is not truly accessible to the very men who create it" (1972a:2l). • The third stage by which Durkheim conferred new signi­ficance on his positivist transformation of religion into the symbolic self-consciousness emerging from the creativeness of generic sociocultural process was the one we are primarily in­ • terested in here--namely, the unique distinction of having ser­ ved as the primal creative womb of society, culture, and per­ son. Thus, instead of being viewed primarily as "repressive" and "regressive," primitive and archaic religions now became • cast as the central evolutionary matrix for all human society. What lent this proposition a paradoxical air--especially com­ ing from a life-long "laic" positivist--was that this implied the evolution out of religion of the very cultural forms with • which the former is so often opposed--namely, logic and scien­ ce, indeed, rational thought itself. An extraordinary sugges­ tion! While religion and science may oppose each other in the modern world as competing bases for legitimate intellectual • and moral authority, in their common origins in the primitive sacral complex they were as one. Rather than the over simple rationalist equation of evolutionary progress with seculari­ zation, Durkheim insisted that the achievements of primitive • religions were an integral part of cultural evolution (see especially Robin Horton, 1973). However, in the symbolic underground of this positiv­ ist moral philosopher's thought, I propose that Durkheim's • dialectical drive took him even further in attempting to re­ concile these apparent opposites. For Durkheim's dialectical genius led him to attempt to transmute religion, through the evolutionary process, into reason. The alchemical instrument • wae, of course, the notion of the primitive sacral complex as the womb of society and culture. Now, remember that one of the positions often held by Durkheim's rationalist brethren, against which he polemicized so vigorously, was the supposi­ • tion that "Reason" is a generic human faculty, embedded deep within the lone, isolated, abstract ego. On the contrary, Durkheim argued, the fundamental categories of human thought, • --304-­ and even the notion of the person itself, ~ social and cultural and historical constructions. As societies evolve, so too do their prime symbolic guidance systems; and, as Durkheim proposed, collective representations, once born in the primitive sacral complex, tend to become increasingly ab­ stract, autonomous, universalizable, and rational as they reach civilizational levels. And, of course, pUblic symbols and moral rules were the preconditions for the awakening of individual conscience and consciousness. In sum, Durkheim ar­ gued that the autonomization of the person, and rationaliza­ tion and universalization in the grounds of moral and intel­ lectual discourse, proceed together on the world-historical level (see E. Leites, 1974; B. Nelson, 1973a). In short, what I suggest is that, by a complex and often circuitous series of more or less implicit symbolic equations and cultural-his­ torical transformations, Durkheim's reconstructed positivist system tended to transmute religion into reason. Indeed, if one understands this complex transformational sequence, we can begin to fathom why Durkheim so assiduously pursued the construction of sociology as the "science of the moral life --for sociology was itself destined to become the ~ form of societal self-consciousness, the new fount of legitimate "laic" moral and intellectual authority, the new ground of "sacredness." Lukes, among others, has noted this crucial dia­ lectical transformation: " ... as a cognitive enterprise, reli­ gion was, if not quite defunct, certaintly moribund. Sociology was its successor" (1973:476). Thus, Durkheim's positivist paradox was made possible only by the combination of his dialectical genius and his mor­ al earnestness. For although he set aside the generic religious intention, he simultaneously sought to save the moralizing ef­ fects of religious action by transmuting the religious core into his own sociological system--I mean quite literally. Yet, in any such profound series of symbolic transformations and intellectual alchemies, traditional connotational loads linger on. Now, it was precisely by redirecting these lingering mean­ ings of religion in the traditional sense, by submitting them I• --305-­ • to his own ingenious series of symbolic transmutations, that Durkheim's dialectical genius appeared to triumph in overcom­ ing such potent traditional oppositions. If, in the final ana­ lysis, we cannot give ourselves completely over to his reduct­ . • ions and positivist symbolic equations, can we not, at least, follow his brilliant analytical leads into the world-histori­ cal significance of the primitive sacral complex as the womb of society, culture, and person? • • • • • • • • --_ .. ---- • • • ANOMIE, EGOISME, AND THE MODERN WORLD • Suicide, Durkheim and Weber, Modern Cultural Traditions, and the First and Second Protestant Ethos • • by DAVID DANIEL MCCLOSKEY • VOLUME II • • A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Sociology and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of -'Doctor of Philosophy • June 1978 • • --306-­ • CHAPTER SEVEN • DURKHEIM ON CIVILIZATIONS AND INTER-CIVILIZATIONAL PROCESS • Collective representations are the result of an im­ mense cooperation, which stretches out not only into space but into time as well; to make them, a multi­ tude of minds have associated, united, and combined their sentiments; for them, long generations have ac­ cumulated their experience and their knowledge (EF:29). Civilization only expresses a collective life of a spe­ cial genre, the substratum of which is a plurality of interrelated political bodies acting upon one another. International life is merely social life of a higher • kind, and one which sociology needs to know (1971:813). • One of the most important and least explored aspects of Durkheim's system of sociology was his continuing concern with the civilizational level of sociocultural analysis. In terms of his basic explanatory model, Durkheim proposed significant parallel developments on the micro and macro levels of socio­ cuLtural process. His concern with the emergence of collect­ ively symbolic representations out of specific social morpho­ • • p logical conditions on the micro societal level led him to postulate, on the macro-evolutionary level, a close and con­ tinuing parallel between social morphological differentiation and differentiation of the corresponding collective represe~­ tations. This parallel evolutionary differentiation implied a series of key processual dimensions, including the movement from concrete to abstract symbolism, from parochial or tribal • to universalizable representations, from the fused embedded­ ness of symbols in the primitive sacral complex to the differ­ entiated autonomy of symbols, spheres, and persons, and so on. It is sad, but not surprising, that since the relations between • societal and civilizational levels have vanished not only from secondary accounts of Durkheim's sociology but from the con­ temporary sociological horizon as well, the critical constitu­ • • • • • • • • • • • • --307-­ tive sociocultural processes underlying these world-histori­ cal developments should also be slighted by subsequent gene­ rations of sociologists. Durkheim's deep interest in sociocultural processes led him to investigate linkages between social morphological pro­ cesses and cultural symbolic forms not merely in terms of their most elementary forms, where the essential links could be seen most clearly, but also in terms of their more complex forms, especially in terms of civilizations and inter-civili­ zational processes. Indeed, from his first great book to his last, Durkheim was centrally concerned with broad evolution­ ary passages from the simplest, most primitive levels of so­ ciocultural process to modern complex civilizations. At var­ ious points in various works, Durkheim referred to certain collective representations (eg. Christian individualism, Car­ tesian rationalism, etc.) which had become historically sedi­ mented into Western civilization. In short, just as Durkheim recognized a horizontal continuum ranging from more or less fluid to crystallized collective representations, so too he postulated a vertical continuum of sociocultural processes ranging from the most elementary, micro, fused, primitive collective representations to the most differentiated, uni­ versal, autonomous cultural symbols on the macro-level of sociocultural process. In The Division of Labor, for instance, Durkheim pro­ posed that the "progressive effacement" of segmental society implied a parallel transformation of concrete and localized symbolism into more general, abstract, unifying collective representations. In a small society, since everyone is clearly placed in the same conditions of existence, the collective environ­ ment is essentially concrete. It is made up of beings of all sorts who fill the social horizon. The states of conscience representing it have the same character. First, they are related to precise objects, as this ani­ mal, this plant, this natural force, etc. Then, as every­ body is related to these things in the same way, they af­ fect all consciences in the same way. The whole tribe, if not too widely extended, enjoys or suffers the same ad­ vantages or inconveniences from the sun, heat, or cold, • --308-­ • • • • • • • • • • from this river, or that source, etc. The collective impressions resulting from the fusion of all these in­ dividual impressions are then determined in form as well as in object, and, consequently, the common con­ science has a defined character. But it changes its nature as societies become more voluminous. Because these societies are spread over a vaster surface, the common conscience is itself obliged to rise above all local diversities, to dominate more space, and conse­ quently to become more abstract. For not many general things can be common to all these diverse environments. It is no longer such an animal, but such a species ... not this forest, but forest in abstracto (DL:287). This movement from concrete, highly specific collective representations, especially those symbolizing the group itself in all its special particularities, is parallele~ given the un­ derlying progressive social morphological differentiation, by another closely related evolutionary passage from highly part­ icularized, formalized symbolisms, to increasingly generalized rules of conduct. Given the "repressiveness" of what I have earlier termed "the primitive sacral complex," Durkheim saw a progressive evolution of morality from highly ritualized, stereotyped, formalizable rules of specific conduct, to more flexible, generalized, rationalized, and more individualized forms of morality. As the index of the progressive effacement of the segmental type of tribal society in the face of the in­ ternationalization of social life, Durkheim looked to the de­ cline of stereotyping formalism and the rise of generalizable rules of conduct. In short, the inevitable breakdown of seg­ mental tribal society, and thus the cult upon which it rested, under the pressure of the ineluctable law of the progressive extension of the "radius of social life," meant that particu­ laristic or tribal barriers to the internationalization of moral rules and conceptual meanings are increasingly attenua­ ted. At the same time as religion, the rules of law become universal, as well as those of morality. Linked at first to local circumstances, to particularities, ethnic, climate, etc., they free themselves little by little, and with the same stroke become more gen­ eral. What makes this increase of generality obvious is the uninterrupted decline of formalism. In lower societies, the very external form of conduct is pre­ • • • • • • • • • • • --309-­ determined even to the details. The way in which man must eat, dress in every situation, the gestures he must make, the formula he must pronounce, are precise­ ly fixed. On the contrary, the further one strays from the point of departure, the more moral and juridical prescriptions lose their sharpness and precision. They rule only the most general forms of conduct, and rule them ina very general manner, saying what must be done, not how it must be done (DL:289). One of the clearest indices of this progressive move­ ment from concrete, particularized, ritually stereotyped form­ alisms to abstract, increasingly universalistic symboli.za­ tion, Durkheim argued, can be found in the progressive trend toward transcendental, universal, and monotheistic gods. The breakdown of the primitive sacral-magical complex is a key process in religious evolution. The fact which perhaps best manifest this increasing tendency of the common conscience is the parallel tran­ scendence of the most essential of its elements, I mean the idea of divinity. In the beginning, the gods are not distinct from the universe, or rather, there are no gods, but only sacred beings .... But little by little, reli­ gious forces are detached from the things of which they were first only the attributes, and become hypostatized. Thus is formed the notions of spirits or gods who, while residing here or there as preferred, nevertheless exist outside of the particular objects to which are more spe­ cifically attached. By that very fact they are less con­ crete ..• The Graeco-Latin polytheism .•. marks new pro­ gress in the direction of transcendence. The residence of the gods becomes more sharply distinct from that of man. Set upon the mysterious heights of Olympus, or dwelling in the recesses of the earth, they personally intervene in human affairs only in intermittent fashion. But it is only with Christianity that God takes leave of space; his kingdom is no longer of this world. The dis­ sociation of nature and the divine is so complete that it degenerates into antagonism. At the same time, the concept of divinity becomes more general, and more ab­ stract, for it is formed, not of sensations, as origin­ ally, but of ideas. The God of humanity necessarily is less concrete than the gods of the city or the clan (DL:288-9). It is significant that Durkheim's description of the evolu­ tion of the gods, and the corresponding evolution of law and morality, parallels Weber's insights into the development of early religions. Both Durkheim and Weber--especially in his magisterial The Sociology of Religion (1963 and 1968) • • • • • • • • • --310-­ --viewed the progressive tendency toward religious universal­ ism, and the corresponding decline of the primitive stereoty­ ped sacral-magical collectivized structures of conscience and consciousness, as one of the critical processes in sociocult­ ural evolution. In contrast to Durkheim, however, Weber search­ ed for the specific historical preconditions allowing specific cultural carriers of universalizing religious tendencies to breakthrough the primitive cosmological and ritual conscious­ ness. Significantly, even though Durkheim viewed these cumula­ tive series of specific historical breakthroughs abstractly, as constituting generic evolutionary processes, nonetheless, at certain points, he did acknowledge the uniqueness of Christ­ ian universalism, for example (see also Book Three) . kh' b yiewed, 1" , l'Wh1'le Dur e1m a stractLYAw1den1ng re 1910US un1versa 1sm as a generic evolutionary process in The Division of Labor, two decades later in The Elementary Forms he took greater care to explain how this tendency came about. At first, it might ap­ pear that Durkheim's turn to wider-than-societal frames such as universalistic religions and civilizations might prove in­ consistent with the foundation theorem of his school. For how is it possible to link universalistic cultural forms to their functions in a specific social body? In other words, how are we to anchor collective representations on the civilizational level to a geographically determinable social morphological substratum, when such symbols by definition transcend tribal and national boundaries? In The Elementary Forms Durkheim an­ swered by moving from the micro, intra-societal level to the macro-evolutionary, inter-societal, inter-cultural, inter­ temporal level. On the intra-societal level, as our investiga­ tion of his basic causal model demonstrated, Durkheim proposed that cultural forms symbolized the collective relationships of people brought into sustained interaction. Now, as once before when he moved from the intra-societal laTel of competi­ tion to the international division of labor, on the inter-so­ cietal or civilizational level Durkheim extended the under­ lying logic of the collectively symbolizing process to include • • • • • • • • • • • --311-­ the increasingly universalistic relations between members of different societies; 04 as he would say, members of a new in­ ternational social life . ... If religion is the product of social causes, how can we explain the individual cult and the universal­ istic character of certain religions? If it is born in foro externo, how has it been able to pass into the inner conscience of the individual and penetrate there ever more and more profoundly? If it is the work of definite and individualized societies, how has it been able to detach itself from them, even to the point of being conceived as something common to all humanity (EF:472)? Durkheim answered that the increasing cosmopolitanism of reli­ gious life and symbols is a consequence of his basic law--the ever-increasing extension of the radius of social energy and co 113ctive life. Neighboring tribes of a similar civilization cannot fail to be in constant relations with each other. All sorts of circumstances give an occasion for it: besides commerce, which is still rudimentary, there are marria­ ges; these international marriages are very common in Australia. In the course of these meetings, men natu­ rally become conscious of the moral relationship which united them.•.. If sacred beings are formed which are connected with no geographically determined society, that is not because they have an extra-social origin. It is because there are other groups above these geo­ graphically determined ones, whose contours are less clearly marked: they have no fixed frontiers, but in­ clude all sorts of more or less neighboring and rela­ ted tribes. The particular social life thus created tends to spread itself over an area with no definite limits. Naturally, the mythological personages who cor­ respond to it have the same character; their sphere of influence is not limited; they go beyond the particu­ lar tribes and their territory. They are the great in­ ternational gods. Now there is nothing in this situa­ tion which is peculiar to Australian societies. There is no people and no state which is not part of another society, more or less unlimited, which embraces all the the peoples and all the states with which the first comes in contact, either directly or indirectly; there is no national life which is not dominated by a collective life of an international nature. In proportion as we advance in history, these international groups acquire a certain importance and extent. Thus we see how, in certain cases, this universalistic tendency has been able to develop it­ self to the point of affecting not only the higher ideas of the religious system, but even the principles upon which it rests (EF:473-4). • • • • • • • • • • • --312-­ Alongside these parallel passages in sociocultural evo­ lution from concrete, tribal, sacrally legitimated collective symbols to the later abstract, general, universalizable, dif­ ferentiated, and secularly autonomous spheres of complex cult­ ures, Durkheim posited a critical corollary movement--namely, the evolutionary emergence of logical thought itself. Here, Durkheim's view of universalization, abstraction, differentia­ tion, autonomization, and rationalization was parallel in many ways to Weber's view of the increasing rationalization of all departments of life. In contrast to those who presumed that the structure of logical thought was inherent in human nature, Durkheim set out one of the most significant and overlooked postulates of his entire system--namely, that the very struct­ ures of rational thought, and, in turn, the rationales under­ lying modern individualism, are themselves sociocultural his­ torical constructions. Given the inevitable extension of the radius of social life, and therefore progressive social morpho­ logical differentiation, then the corresponding differentia­ tion and extension of collectively symbolic cultural forms served as critical vehicles for the elaboration of rational­ ity and individualism. In other words, the widening of the so­ cial bond and rationalization of morality and thought proceed together on the world-historical level. It is, Durkheim argued, only the fact that these sociocultural constructions are so deeply sedimented in the very nature of modern complex civili­ zation that we fail to perceive their historical character. It has often been remarked that civilization has a tendency to become more rational and more logical. The cause is now evident. That alone is rational which is universal. What baffles the understanding is the-Particular and the concrete. Only the gener­ al is well thought of. Consequently, the nearer the common conscience is to particular things, the more it bears their imprint, the more unintelligible it also is*(DL:289-90). Now, one of Durkheim's basic dichotomies in this regard was the opposition between concepts and sensations. Here, this root dichotomy takes on a genetic-historical character, for Durkheim identified primitive thought with localized sensations, • --313-­ and logical thought with more generalized, differentiated, • • • • • • • • • and abstracted social relationships. That is why primitive civilizations affect us as they do. Being unable to subsume them under logical princi­ ples, we succeed in seeing only bizarre and fortuitous combinations of heterogeneous elements. In reality, there is nothing artificial about them. It is necessary only to seek their determining causes in sensations and movements of sensibility, not in concepts. And if this is so, it is because the social environment for which they are made is not sufficiently extended. On the contrary, when civilization is ~eveloped over a vaster field of action, whenit is appl~d to more people and things, general ideas necessarily appear and become pre­ dominant there. The idea of man, for example, replaces in law, morality, in religion, that of Roman, which be­ ing more concrete, is refractory to science. Thus, it is the increase of volume in societies and their great­ er concentration which explains this great transforma­ tion (DL:290). True to his fundamental postulates, Durkheim here expressed his seminal notion that logical or rational and universally valid thought is itself an evolutionary emergent--a sociocul­ tural historical construction--rather than a generic given. In his conclusion to his masterpiece, The Elementary Forms, published almost two decades after The Division of Labor, Durkheim suggested: If logical thought tends to rid itself more and more of the subjective and personal elements which it still retains from its origin, it is not because extra-social factors have intervened; it is much rather because a social life of a new sort is developing. It is this-in­ ternational life which has-already resulted in univer­ salizing religious beliefs. As it extends, the collect­ ive horizon enlarges; the society ceases to appear as the only whole, to become a part of a much vaster one, with undetermined frontiers, which is susceptible of advancing indefinitely. Consequently, things can no longer be contained in the social moulds according to which they were primitively classified; they must be organized according to principles which are their own, so logical organization differentiates itself from the social organization and becomes autonomous. Really and truly human thought is not ~ primitive fact; it is the product of a history~(EF:493). Given the great value placed by Durkheim on these higher level evolutionary emergents--especially rationality and indi­ vidualism--one might conclude that such sociocultural achieve­ • I • • • • • • • • • • --314-­ ments are consciously won. However, true to his positivist commitments, and in direct contrast to spiritualistic or ethical philosophers who portray humanity as striving to reach ever-higher civilizational levels, Durkheim forcefully argued that these results are more or less mechanically pro­ duced. Far from serving as a conscious goal, these civiliza­ tional achievements are themselves mechanical results of ever­ increasing social intensity, energy, social morphological dif­ ferentiation and the progressive division of labor. Civilization is itself the necessary consequence of the changes which are produced in the volume and in the density of societies. If science, art, and eco­ nomic activity develop, it is in accordance with a ne­ cessity which is imposed upon men. It is because there is, for them, no other way of living in the new condi­ tions in which they have been placed. From the time that the number of individuals among whom social rela­ tions are established begins to increase, they can main­ tain themselves only by greater specialization, harder work, and intensification of their faculties. From this general stimulation, there inevitably results a much higher degree of culture. From this point of view, civ­ ilization appears, not as an end which moves peoples by its attraction for them, not as a good foreseen and de­ sired in advance .•• but as the effect of a cause, as the necessary resultant of a given state. It is not the pole towards which historical development is moving and to which men seek to get nearer in order to be happier or better, for neither happiness nor morality necessar­ ily increases with the intensity of life. They move be­ cause they must move, and what determines the speed of this march is the more or less strong pressure which they exercise upon one another, according to their num­ ber (DL:336-7). Toward the end of his life, Durkheim took greater care to develop the notion of civilization as the highest inter­ national level of sociocultural complexity. First, it is ne­ cessary to distinguish between several meanings of civiliza­ tion, especially the meaning of "high" and "low" culture as implied in the phrase "state of civilization" as contrasted with the notion of sociocultural complexity. For example, in The Division of Labor, and even as late 1906, Durkheim still used the term civilization in the first sense: • • --315-­ • • • • • • • • • Civilization is the result of cooperation of men in association through successive'generations: it is es­ sentiallya social product .... Civilization is the as­ sembly of all the things to which we attach the high­ est price: it is the congregation of the highest human values (SP:54). Second, Durkheim was often critical of other sociologists at­ tempts to define civilizations in the second sense as a level of sociocultural complexity. He contended " ... that these at­ tempts, although conducted by scciologists of worth, have giv­ en only vague, indecisive results of little utility" (R:88,nO). For example, in "Two Laws of Penal Evolution ", Durkheim argued that " ... the same society can no more change its type in the course of its evolution, than an animal can change its species IIduring its own Ii fetime [1900] (1973: 2 88), and then followed with this footnote: This is why it does not seem to us to be very scienti­ fic to classify societies according to their degree of civilization, as both Spencer and Steinmetz have done. For one is then obliged to classify one and the same society into several social species, according to the political structure it has successively assumed or ac­ cording to the degree of civilization which it has pro­ gressively passed through. What would one say of a zoo­ logist who classified the same animal into different species in this fashion? And yet a society has even more than does an organism a definite character, unique to itself, in certain respects, from the beginning to the end of its existence: consequently, a system of classification which fails to recognize this fundamen­ tal unity seriously distorts reality. One can, of cour­ se, distinguish in this fashion between social states, not societies: and social states separated thus from the permanent substructures which binds them one to ano­ ther, rest on a foundation of air. It is therefore the analysis of this infrastructure, and not the changing ways of living which it sustains. which alone can pro­ vide the basis for a rational classification (1973:307, #2) • And in the second edition of his Rules (1901), Durkheim brief­ ly reviewed efforts such as those of the Germans Vierkandt and Steinment (the latter which he published in the Annee sociolo­ gique) as deficient for " •.• classifying not social species, but historical phases, which is quite different" (R:88). Clear­ ly, Durkheim's own thought, still beset by biological analo­ • --316-­ • • • • • • • • • gies, had not settled on a clear articulation of the sociolo­ gical meaning and significance of "civilization." It was not until 1913 that Durkheim, with the help of Mauss, turned attention to a fuller elaboration of this impor­ tant concept in their joint "Sur la notion de civilisation" published in the last Annee sociologique to appear with Durk­ heim at the editorial helm. Having just completed detailed analyses and explanations of the key intra-societal functions of collectively representational processes in The Elen~ntary Forms, Durkheim next turned his attention to analysis of the inter-societal, inter-cultural, inter-temporal horizons impli­ ed in the passage from concrete, stereotyped formalisms, fused and sacralized symbols toward universalizable cultural forms. With this shift in attention from the micro to the macro level of sociocultural process the growing recognition of the im­ portance of civilizational matrices of complex cultural forms marks a new and significant phase in Durkheim's development, albeit one which was cut short by the impending doom of World War I. Later, Mauss extended their original joint paper (see B. Nelson, 1971), and thereafter, the new thrust of Durkheim­ ian sociology influenced some of the finest writing in the historical and social sciences produced in France (see espe­ cially the Annales ... ) during this era (see R. Rhodes, 1974). Durkheim and Mauss began their important and overlooked "Note on the Notion of Civilization", only recently brought to our attention by Benjamin Nelson (1971), by observing that if the foundation theorem of their school was applied too narrow­ ly, then crucial inter-societal matrices of universalistic cul­ tural forms constituting civilizational complexes would, unfor­ tunately, be slighted. One of the rules we follow here is that, in studying social phenomena in themselves and by themselves, we take care not to leave them in the air but always to relate them to a definite substratum, that is, to a human group occupying a determinate portion of geogra­ phically representable space. But, of all these groups, the largest--that which comprises all of the others in itself and which consequently comprises all forms of social activity--is, it would appear, that which forms • • --317-­ • the political society: tribe, clan, nation, city, state, and so on. It seems, then, on first view, that collective life can develop only within polit­ ical organisms having definite contours, within • strictly marked limits, that is to say, that the national life is the highest form of social phe~o­ mena and sociology cannot know one of a higher or­ der. There are, nonetheless, phenomena which do not have such well-defined limits; they pass beyond the political frontiers and extend over less easily determinable spaces. Although their complexity ren­ ders their study difficult, it nonetheless behooves us to acknowledge their existence and to indicate their place within the bounds of sociology (1971:809). • Ethnography and prehistory, Durkheim suggested, have stood • almost alone in" directing our attention to this perspect­ ive," in contrast to both history, which has taci.tly embra­ ced the nation state as its basic unit of analysis, and socio­ logy, which has looked either to sub-national social group­ • ings or to an abstracted "humanity" (eg. see Durkheim' s re­ peated criticisms of Comte on this matter in The Rules). Now, this important recognition of certain potential limitations in the basic explanatory rule of their school re­ presents not so much an abandonment of this rule on the part of Durkheim and Mauss, as a crucial turning point in the ex­ tension of their basic interpretive logics to new and more • significant levels of complexity. Durkheim had previously prepared the way for this important extension by his early in­ sistence that universal, abstract, and rational collective re­ presentations take on increasing significance in sociocultural • evolution in that they come to symbolize the new emerging inter­ national social life. Universalizable symbols--those capable of constituting civilizational complexes--express public re­ cognition of the growing bonds between members of diverse so­ • cieties. • Social phenomena that are not strictly attached to a social organization do exist: they extend into areas that reach beyond the national territory or they devel­ op over periods of time that exceed the history of a single society. They have a life which is some ways supranational (1971:810) • • • --318-­ • • • • • • • • Durkheim and Mauss utilized the Indo-European family of languages to illustrate the significance of these crucial inter-societal, inter-temporal matrices of complex sociocul­ tural life. If we limit ourselves simply to societal or sub­ cultural analyses, we inevitably cut ourselves off from these wider horizons. This failure becomes more critical when we realize that, in general, higher levels of complexity exert greater influence on lower levels through time than vice versa. it has been recognized that phenomena which pre­ sent this degree of extension are not independent of one another; they are generally linked in an inter­ dependent system. It often occurs that one of these phenomena involves the others and reveals their exist­ ence .... All peoples who speak an Indo-European lang­ uage have a common fund of ideas and institutions. There exist not merely isolated instances, but also complex and interdependent systems, which without be­ ing limited to a determinate political organism are, however, localizable in time and space (1971:810). Durkheim and Mauss assigned the term "civilization" to these higher order of translocal sociocultural facts, and defined them thus: "A civilization constitutes a kind of moral milieu encompassing a certain number of nations, each national cult­ ure being only a particular form of the whole" (1971:811). However, these theorists proceeded further, and noted the here­ tofore neglected advantages of the civilizational perspective. All sorts of problems, neglected until now, could be connected with this subject. One could ask what are the diverse conditions which determine variations in the areas of civilizations, why have they stopped here or there, what forms they have taken and what factors determine these forms. As Ratzel has shown, these ques­ tions that are asked concerning political frontiers could be posed equally well with respect to symbolic frontiers (frontieres ideales) (1971:812). Indeed, Durkheim and Mauss's deep concern with the evolution­ ary emergence of these ascending orders of "symbolic frontiers" led them to conclude: ... civilization only expresses a collective life of a special genre, the substratum of which is a plurality of interrelated political bodies acting upon one ano­ ther. International life is merely social life of a higher kind, and one which sociology needs to know . ... The exclusion of sociology from these studies would never have been considered if it were not still • • --319-­ • • • • • • • • • believed that to explain a civilization one need merely ask whence it comes, from what it has bor­ rowed, and by what means it has passed from one point to another. In reality, the true manner of understanding all this is to determine the causes of which it is the result, that is to say, what col­ lective interactions of diverse orders produced it (1971:813). Further, Durkheim and Mauss emphasized the differential susceptibility of various structural and cultural elements to inter-cultural and evolutionary sedimentation into the socio­ cultural process on the civilizational level. Furthermore, not all social phenomena are equally apt to internationalize themselves. Political jurisdictions, juridical institutions, the phenonena of social morphol­ ogy constitute part of the specific character of each people. On the other hand, the myths, tales, money, com­ merce, fine arts, techniques, tools, languages, words, scientific knowledge, literary forms, and ideas--all of these travel and are borrowed. In short, they result from a process involving more than a determinate society (1971:812) • Durkheim and Mauss emphasized here a critical dimension in inter-civilizational process, for by their very nature, high­ er level cultural forms symbolizing links between diverse so­ cieties must rise above all tribalistic particularities to an increasingly universalizable level. A year earlier in the con­ clusion to The Elementary Forms, Durkheim took care to dis­ tinguish universality (or universalizability) from generality, or the degree of extension of a concept. The universality of the concept should not be confused with its generality; they are very different things. What ~ mean ~ universality is the property which the the concept has of being conununicable to ~ number of minds, and in principle, to all minds; but this com­ municability is wholly independent of the degree of its extension. A concept which is applied to only one ob­ ject, and whose extension is consequently at the mini­ mum, can be the same for everybody: such is the case with the concept of a deity* (EF:482, #9). Thus, a universalizable cultural form is one which is capa­ ble of symbolizing inter-societal, inter-temporal phenomena; universalizable symbols lie at the very heart of the civili­ zational bond. Durkheim and Mauss developed further this cru­ cial criterion of degrees of potential universal conununicabil­ • • --320-­ ity or universalizability among the various social facts as • more or less successful candidates for incorporation into the civilizational process. They noted that certain types of cultural elements, by their very nature, are predisposed to this very important process of inter-cultural and inter-tem­ poral sedimentation. • It is justifiable, then, to ask on what this unequal co­ efficient of expansion and internalization depends. These differences are not determined solely by the intrinsic nature of the social phenomena, but also by the diverse conditions influencing societies. A certain form of col­ lective life, then, mayor may not be susceptible to in­ ternationalization depending on these circumstances. • Christianity is essentially international, but there have also been strictly national religions. There are some languages which are spread across vast territories~ there are others which serve to distinguish nationalities, as is the case with those spoken by the great peoples of Europe (1971:812). Durkheim and Mauss's potentially profound contribution here to the sociological theory of collective representations • as key constitutive sociocultural processes on the civiliza­ tional level needs only the notion of cultural-historical traditions to become one of the most valuable perspectives in the human sciences of the future. l • • • • • --32·1-­ • CHAPTER EIGHT THE EMERGENCE OF THE PERSON THROUGH HISTORY • Introduction. At the outset, a paradox presents itself: how is it possible that the Durkheim who is portrayed as ~~al­ ly anti-individualist was also the very same thinker whose • centr~ value in the modern world was the human person? How could Durkheim deny the individual independent status, and then enshrine him at the core of modern culture? How could • Durkheim, at one and the same time, authorize society as the foundation of human life, and then apotheosize the "modern cult of the individual"? Do these seemingly contradictory po­ sitions not bespeak of an ineradicable inconsistency in Durk­ heim's thought which vitiates its value? • Rather than demonstrating Durkheim at his worst, how­ ever, perhaps these positions reveal him at his best. For, as always, Durkheim sought to dialectically reconcile such anti­ • nomies in terms of a new and higher sociocultural synthesis. In transcending the limits of these received dichotomies, Durkheim sought to build a new foundation for the human scien­ ces resting on the twin anchors of socio-10gic and evolution­ ary progress. Problems in understanding this apparent combi­ • nation of opposites are really ours, not Durkheim's. For we are so much the heirs of a strong tradition of individualism, ~ ,....- . . ......--.--.. of atomism and logical nominalism, that we implicitly assume -'---' there to be an inherent, ineradicable antagonism between the individual and society. As Louis Dumont (1965, 1970) suggests, our rather unique presuppositions may blind us to differing notions of personhood in other cultures; moreover, they may blind us to the sometimes destructive results of our own deep­ est moral commitments. Stemming especially from Enlightenment notions of "nat­ ~-, ­ ...-...----­ ural reason," "natural rights," and the "social contract," we ----... ~ ------- • --322-­ tend t~be1ieve that the individual precedes society, that the individual is self-sufficient, and that social norms and • .cultural rules serve mainly to restrict the natural freedom of individuals. Indeed, freedom is often portrayed primarily in negative terms such as liberation, as snedding of controls, release from the "ancient servitudes," from the irrational • constraints of blood, soil, tradition, and Church. Thus, our modern negative images of freedom as release from control rest on two essential corollaries: the notion of a self-sub­ sistent ego which is the real source of moral virtue and the • foundation of certain knowledge, and a state of nature in which this ego dwells. Freedom today, therefore, implies the release of the individual ego from irrational traditional so­ cial constraints, and return to its pre-established interior • harmonies. Conceived with this rhetorical bias, then, freedom in positive terms means largely the spontaneous acting out of impulse and primary process, of total simultaneous integration of body and mind, of immediate consummation of desire. In the • 1970's, at least in America, the Religion of The Self is deep­ ened through the endless pursuit of myriad ingenious "thera­ peutics" designed to shed all distorting external constraints, and to restore the Self to its natural harmony. Starting from • ~ the lone, isolated ego, solipsism becomes the tacit epistem­ ology, and narcissism our lived ethic. The sources of this vast ~ransva1uation of values" are many~ but their very diversity and pervasiveness reinforces the dynamic mainline of development. The intimate linkage be­ ~• ­ tween "Re.-Qson" an~dividua1" in Rationa1ist_~nd Utilitar­ ian philosophy alike, and between the "Individual," subject­ ivity, and the inner emotions of angst in Romantic and Ideal­ • istic philosophy and art, both placed great emphasis on the generic individual. And Durkheim spoke of his own countrymen .. as "lore wolves, given to a fierce individualism, and suspi­ .. _.~.~._- ~ cious......,..i-s-o-1-a-fion." But what these various cultural traditions, • in their common opposition to the social organicism and inter­personal ethics of the lingering Catholic cultural tradition, had placed so high, Durkheim placed low with his notion of • • --323-­ the irrationality and insatiability of the pre-social ego. Now, it may help to recall that the critical problem • faced by the pioneers of early modern cultures was a compel­ ling response to massive crises of human certainty and cert­ itude. In the transitional passage to the modern era, haunt­ ing questions widely asked included: "How shall I know if I • am saved? How do we know anything to be true? How shall we gain certain knowledge1'During that time which Huizanga call­ ed "the waning of the middle ages," and what Hadyn termed "the Counter-Renaissance," skepticism, fideism, and probabil­ • ism, and so forth held the day. Against this background, var­ ious priestly and prophetic figures, various ascetics and mys­ tics, rose up to proclaim new and mighty objective certain­ ties and inner certitudes. In anchoring certitude in the hu­ • man subject, such pioneers of early modern cultures as Luth­ er, Calvin, the spiritual radicals, Descartes, Pascal, Hobbes, Locke, Leibnitz, and so forth (whatever their myriad other differences), all relied on a deeply interior faith, or feel­ • ing, the inherent rationality of the human mind, or some in­ ner experience-of an equally irreducible - sort. In these para­ llel solutions, the religion of the "inner light" and the significance of the Self was raised to new heights. Thus, • for example, Luther's response to the feeling of pervasive evil, of total guilt, and anxiety about his own salvation led him to the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide). Descartes' response to skepticism and the reign­ • ing "fictionalism" of the Church establishment was to have re­ course to a rigorous mathematical clarity anchored in the ir­ c--- _-----­ reducible self-consciousness of the ego (cogito, ergo sum). And in a slightly different manner, Calvin's notion of the • predestined elect and the Puritan's "automachia" (Bercovitch, 1975) reinforced the same trend. With these pioneers of the modern moral universe, there begins that momentous "journey into the interior" which also pervades Montaigne's essays, • Pascal's frightened existential lon~iness and conversion, the Elizabethan's melancholic malaise seen in Hamlet's anx­ iety without a true "objective correlative," Leibnitz's mon­ • • --324-­ ads, Hobbes' atomism and nominalism, Locke's empiricism, the Scottish moralists' "conunon se~e" a~ the unbrIdled egoism • of the Utilitarian reformers, Rousseau's romanticism of feel­ ing, and on through the various metamorphoses of the Trans­ cendental Self of the idealists such as Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and so many others. In the modern era, then, the anchor of • legitimate moral and intellectual authority shifts decisive­ ly away from the intelligibility of the natural world mirror­ ed in man's reason (logos), from tradition, from Church, from community, to the morally autonomous and intellectually re­ • sponsible Subject. In his profound extension of Durkheim's work on the evolution of the person through history, Marcel Mauss, after tracing the progressive sedimentation of the notion of per­ • sonhood, for instance, speaks of the importance of the phil­ • osophy of the Transcendental Ego in the last couple of cen­ turies. However, the notion of the person had to undergo yet another transformation to become what it has become in less than one and a half centuries, the category of the ego. Far from being the primordial, innate i­ dea, clearly inscribed since Adam in the most pro­ found depth of being, here it continues almost to our day, slowly raising itself, clarifying, specifying, • identifying itself with knowledge of the self, with the psychological consciousness