Durkheim, ÉMile
DURKHEIM, ÉMILE (1858–1917), known generally as France's first sociologist, was far more than that. David Émile Durkheim was also a historian and theorist of pedagogy, moral education, and morals; a student of traditional societies, ritual life, and the world's religions; an active agent of social reform and religious change in his own milieu; a writer of patriotic tracts during World War I; a prominent defender of Alfred Dreyfus; a champion of charitable relief efforts for Jews fleeing the Russian pogroms of the early twentieth century; and a lifelong, although thoroughly eclectic and radical, philosopher.
In terms of his own strategic intellectual goals and his reputation among his contemporaries, Durkheim sought to infuse a sociological apperception into all areas of human life, especially religion. As an academic, he raised this awareness of the social dimension first by systematically challenging the identities of the two leading humanistic disciplines of his day—history and philosophy. In doing so, he sought to radically reorient their practice. To Durkheim, the historians of his day were dull describers and documenters; Durkheim sought instead to explain events by revealing their underlying sociological causes. He likewise thought that philosophy had stagnated by remaining speculative and locked into psychological introspection.
This page contains 201 words.
Durkheim, ÉMile article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 3,089 words
(approx. 10 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Émile Durkheim Article
