Rethinking Durkheim's Intellectual Development Ii: Working Out a Religious Sociology

Abstract

In the first part of this paper I established Durkheim's intense dissatisfaction with the materialism of his earlier work. I demonstrated also how the series of critical reviews of this work embarrassed Durkheim and crystallized his desire to revise his theory. Finally, I showed how a much more subjectivist theory emerged in the 1893- 1896 period. In this second part, I argue that these developments were themselves transitional. Beginning in the published work of 1896, there emerges a much more subjectivist theory still Durkheim calls this his 'religious sociology' With it, he felt, he could finally present the alternative to matenalism he had always sought, and through it he argued with his critics that he had never been 'materialist' at all! The 'spiritual programme of Durkheim's later writings' has never been appreciated. In the last twenty years of life he sought to rethink and rewrite every aspect of his theory of society. Properly understood, this theory, though badly one-sided, offers a precious legacy to contemporary studies of cultural life.