Death
Grave of Émile Durkheim, the founder of sociology, in Montparnasse
Cemetery, Paris, France
The outbreak of World War I was to have a tragic effect on Durkheim's life.
His leftism was always patriotic rather than internationalist, in that he
sought a secular, rational form of French life. However, the onset of the war,
and the inevitable nationalist propaganda that followed, made it difficult to
sustain this already nuanced position. While Durkheim actively worked to
support his country in the war, his reluctance to give in to simplistic
nationalist fervor (combined with his Jewish background) made him a
natural target of the now-ascendant French Right. Even more seriously, the
generations of students that Durkheim had trained were now being drafted
to serve in the army, many of them perishing in the trenches.[citation
needed]
Finally, Durkheim's own son, André, died on the war front in December 1915
—a loss from which Durkheim never recovered.[16][18] Emotionally
devastated, Durkheim collapsed of a stroke in Paris two years later, on 15
November 1917.[18] He was buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.
[19]
Methodology
Cover of the French edition of The Rules of Sociological Method (1919)
In The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Durkheim expressed his desire
to establish a method that would guarantee sociology's truly scientific
character. One of the questions raised concerns the objectivity of the
sociologist: how may one study an object that, from the very beginning,
conditions and relates to the observer? According to Durkheim, observation
must be as impartial and impersonal as possible, even though a "perfectly
objective observation" in this sense may never be attained. A social fact
must always be studied according to its relation with other social facts,
never according to the individual who studies it. Sociology should therefore
privilege comparison rather than the study of singular independent facts.[iv]
Durkheim sought to create one of the first rigorous scientific approaches to
social phenomena. Along with Herbert Spencer, he was one of the first
people to explain the existence and quality of different parts of a society
through referencing what function they served in maintaining the quotidian
(i.e. by how they make society "work"). He also agreed with Spencer's
organic analogy, comparing society to a living organism.[14] As a result, his
work is sometimes seen as a precursor to functionalism.[11][20][21][22]
Durkheim also insisted that society was more than the sum of its parts.[v]
[23]
Unlike his contemporaries Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber, he did not
focus on what motivates individuals' actions (an approach associated with
methodological individualism), but rather on the study of social facts.
[citation needed]
Inspirations
During his university studies at the ENS, Durkheim was influenced by two
neo-Kantian scholars: Charles Renouvier and Émile Boutroux.[11] The
principles Durkheim absorbed from them included rationalism, scientific
study of morality, anti-utilitarianism, and secular education.[14] His
methodology was influenced by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a
supporter of the scientific method.[14]
Comte
A fundamental influence on Durkheim's thought was the sociological
positivism of Auguste Comte, who effectively sought to extend and apply
the scientific method found in the natural sciences to the social sciences.
[14] According to Comte, a true social science should stress empirical facts,
as well as induce general scientific laws from the relationship among these
facts. There were many points on which Durkheim agreed with the positivist
thesis:
First, he accepted that the study of society was to be founded on an
examination of facts.
Second, like Comte, he acknowledged that the only valid guide to objective
knowledge was the scientific method.
Third, he agreed with Comte that the social sciences could become scientific
only when they were stripped of their metaphysical abstractions.[14]
