Frasi di Émile Durkheim

„La coscienza collettiva […] è l'insieme delle credenze e dei sentimenti comuni alla media dei membri di una società […]. Questo insieme ha una vita propria […] essa non esiste che attraverso i sentimenti e le credenze presenti nelle coscienze individuali […]. Ma evolve secondo leggi proprie.“

—  Émile Durkheim

da La divisione del lavoro sociale

„Le passioni umane si fermano solo dinanzi a una potenza morale che rispettino. Se manca una qualsiasi autorità di questo tipo, la legge del più forte regna e, latente o acuto, lo stato di guerra è necessariamente cronico… Mentre le funzioni economiche un tempo rappresentavano solo una parte secondaria, esse ora stanno al primo posto. Di fronte a loro vediamo arretrare sempre più le funzioni militari, amministrative, religiose.“

—  Émile Durkheim

da De la division du travail social, Prefazione alla II edizione, pp. III-IV
Origine: Citato in Raymond Aron, Le tappe del pensiero sociologico, CDE, Milano 1984.

„Se dunque esiste una verità che la storia ha reso indubbia, questa è proprio l'estensione sempre minore della porzione di vita sociale che la religione ricopre. In origine essa si estendeva su tutto; tutto ciò che era sociale era religioso; i due termini erano sinonimi. In seguito, a poco a poco, le funzioni politiche, economiche, scientifiche si sono rese indipendenti dalla funzione religiosa, costituendosi a parte e assumendo un carattere temporale sempre più accentuato. Dio – per così dire – che in principio era presente a tutte le relazioni umane, si ritira progressivamente da esse; abbandona il mondo agli uomini e alle loro controversie.“

—  Émile Durkheim

da La divisione del lavoro sociale

„Tra dio e società bisogna scegliere.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Origine: Citato in Focus, n. 81, p. 144.

„La sociologia, pertanto, non è ausiliaria rispetto a qualsiasi altra scienza, ma è essa stessa una scienza distinta e autonoma.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Origine: Citato in AA.VV., Il libro della sociologia, traduzione di Martina Dominici, Gribaudo, 2018, p. 24. ISBN 9788858015827

„La società non è una semplice somma di individui; al contrario, il sistema formato dalla loro associazione rappresenta una realtà specifica dotata di caratteri propri. La sociologia, pertanto, non è ausiliaria rispetto a qualsiasi altra scienza, ma è essa stessa una scienza distinta e autonoma.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Origine: Citato in AA.VV., Il libro della sociologia, traduzione di Martina Dominici, Gribaudo, 2018, p. 37. ISBN 9788858015827

„Every society is a moral society.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Origine: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 228
Contesto: Every society is a moral society. In certain respects, this character is even more pronounced in organised societies. Because the individual is not sufficient unto himself, it is from society that he receives everything necessary to him, as it is for society that he works.

„When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Attributed from postum publications
Origine: Jeffrey Eisenach et al. (1993), Readings in renewing American civilization, p. 54

„Everybody knows that we like those who resemble us, those who think and feel as we do. But the opposite is no less true. It very often happens that we feel kindly towards those who do not resemble us, precisely because of this lack of resemblance.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Origine: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 54

„Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.“

—  Émile Durkheim

„The general conclusion of the book which the reader has before him is that religion is something eminently social.“

—  Émile Durkheim, libro The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Origine: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1912, p. 10

„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 capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.“

—  Émile Durkheim, libro Suicide

Suicide (1897)

„Melancholy suicide. —This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract;“

—  Émile Durkheim

Origine: On Suicide: A Study in Sociology

„We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.“

—  Émile Durkheim

„Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Origine: On Suicide: A Study in Sociology

„Maniacal suicide. —This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Origine: On Suicide: A Study in Sociology

„A passion for the infinite is daily presented as a sign of moral distinction, when in fact it can only occur in disturbed minds which accord the status of a norm to the very disturbance from which they are suffering.“

—  Émile Durkheim, libro Suicide

Suicide (1897)

„Now, it is unquestionable that language, and consequently the system of concepts which it translates, is the product of a collective elaboration. What it expresses is the manner in which society as a whole represents the facts of experience. The ideas which correspond to the diverse elements of language are thus collective representations. Even their contents bear witness to the same fact. In fact, there are scarcely any words among those which we usually employ whose meaning does not pass, to a greater or less extent, the limits of our personal experience. Very frequently a term expresses things which we have never perceived or experiences which we have never had or of which we have never been the witness. Even when we know some of the objects which it concerns, it is only as particular examples that serve to illustrate the idea which they would never have been able to form by themselves. Thus there is a great deal of knowledge condensed in the word which I never collected, and which is not individual; it even surpasses me to such an extent that I cannot even completely appropriate all its results. Which of us knows all the words of the language he speaks and the entire signification of each?“

—  Émile Durkheim, libro The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Origine: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1912, p. 434

„In short, all suicides of the insane are either devoid of any motive or determined by purely imaginary motives. Now, many voluntary deaths fall into neither category; the majority have motives, and motives not unfounded in reality. Not every suicide can therefore be considered insane, without doing violence to language.“

—  Émile Durkheim, libro Suicide

Suicide (1897)