/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10830708]

Why is Durkheim so fucking based? And why has nobody ever read his works? Seriously, he's a better philosopher than pretty much any of his contemporaries and that wasn't even his main occupation. Actually, maybe that's why.

Just finished Suicide, it was fantastic. Don't let the statistics put you off and read it.

[Anonymous No.10830717]

I like him cause he’s Juxtaposed to Marx and his negativity

[Anonymous No.10830748]

>>10830717
Which is funny because their ideas about society are very similar. They both place the social consciousness above the individual, they just disagree about the consequences.

But Durkheim is fucking great. He has ideas that would be considered super radical even today and he wrote over a century ago.
>shits on stoics
>shits on NEETs
>shits on philosophers
>shits on socialists
>shits on classical liberals
>uncontrolled capitalism inherently breeds anomy (degeneracy)
>mental illness, depression, and suicide are caused by a sick society, not personal factors
>the social consciousness is a real, actual thing and not just a metaphor
>marriage is a burden on women but necessary
>etc

And his cure for society is essentially Nazi Germany, 40 years before it happened. It's good that nobody actually reads his works or he'd probably be too politically incorrect to be considered "one of the founding fathers of sociology"

[Anonymous No.10830786]

I read the Rules something something book a while ago with no context at all and don't remember much about it but I didn't get a proto-nazi vibe at all, in fact I don't remember any advocacy for any type of society just an attempt to think through current societies' phenomena like crime and mass hysteria in causal terms

[Anonymous No.10830797]

>>10830708
There is no such thing as a based atheist.

[Anonymous No.10830802]

>>10830797
This. Only [my particular brand of spirituality] people can be based.

[Anonymous No.10830809]

>>10830717
You haven't read either have you?

[Anonymous No.10830813]

>>10830802

[Anonymous No.10830852]

>>10830786
I mean more the state structure of Nazi Germany, not exterminations of cripples or Jews or anything like that. In Suicide Durkheim basically proposes a society where the state cooperates with and controls corporations to provide moral guidance and unity to the people working there since
1. Religion had lost the influence it once had on people's lives and its decline was inevitable due to the spread of rational thought
2. Marriage meant less now that divorce was becoming freely attainable
3. Unrestricted capitalism produces chronic anomy in society

Durkheim basically said that corporations and the state should become sort of a new "Catholic church", the moral guide and restrainer of the people since there was nothing else to take its place in modern society and they're the only kind of common community shares by modern man in capitalist society.

[Anonymous No.10830972]

>>10830748
What is uncontrolled capitalism and how does it differ from capitalism under Nazi Germany? Much of what has been come to known as neoliberalism was first introduced in Nazi Germany.

[Anonymous No.10830976]

>>10830813
>incorrect [particular brand of spirituality] detected.

[Anonymous No.10831014]

I find Durkheim very interesting as well, but I'm not sure if I buy his arguments against historical materialism. Durkheim basically thinks that elementary forms of religious organisation are more fundamental/socially prior to the economic base, so they are properly the first determining element. I guess it's an argument for historians, but I see the basic approach of Marx and Engels (in the German Ideology for instance) to be more plausible.

[Anonymous No.10832949]

>>10830717
>Marx the pessimist

Marx is an optimist who believes that people can voluntarily break free from their societal shackles and willingly mold a more ideal world for themselves. Your opinion on what he considered a more ideal world is irrelevant, he still believes that people could choose a better life if they were willing to fight for it. If you want sociologically pessimistic you should read Weber.

[Anonymous No.10833012]

>>10830813
ha ha, this is a very funny picture of a man with a hat! where did you fiend it, my friend?

[Anonymous No.10833082]

>>10830748
>>10830708
>>10830852
>>10830786

Interesting, I never got the Nazi vibe before. IIRC Comte was a big influence on Durkheim and his stuff turned cultlike worldwide (very interesting too, look up Positivism).

Durkheim really is fucking based though

[Anonymous No.10833103]

>>10832949
Except he denounces all poor and workers that can't reach class counsciousness (read: won't agree with him) as "lumpenproletariats" who are to be seen as potential reactinoaries and social parasites. Mao was actually the first important Marxist to argue that they weren't all bad.

[Anonymous No.10833111]

It's (with Mauss) babby's first sociology.
And it doesn't mean that it is good, far from that.

The leplaysian school is far more interesting.
Also, people like Monnerot and Freund are very interesting.

[Anonymous No.10833126]

>>10833111
Also, I forgot Pareto

[Anonymous No.10833132]

>>10833103
t. my ass

[Anonymous No.10833140]

>>10833082
It's only Nazi-eque in that he idealized a world where the masses are happily lead along by their industry-state overlords. Brave New World would be a better example imo. Similarly to BNW, Durkheim's problem is that he doesn't account enough for the subjectivism of the individual where his ideal society would eventually be more oppressive than supportive.

[Anonymous No.10833489]

>>10830852
that sounds stupid and the (sustained) possibility of which marx already debunked before durkheim even proposed it

[Anonymous No.10833589]

>>10830748
>It's good that nobody actually reads his works or he'd probably be too politically incorrect to be considered "one of the founding fathers of sociology"
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Durkheim is read today by largely the same people who read his works back in the day, academics. He remains a major figure in sociology which has caused some like Donald Black (see http://www.mediafire.com/file/9nlqt2ta2tpw2m2/Black-2000-Dreams-of-Pure-Sociology.pdf)) to bemoan that the field is in many ways stagnant spending their time rehashing/praises what others like Durkheim already said. You can easily find books defending him like "Defending the Durkheimian Tradition: Religion, Emotion and Morality" by Jonathan S. Fish.

[Anonymous No.10833729]

>>10833589
The problem with contemporary sociological theory is that everyone who tries and create it gets shat on and shutdown. The field seemingly wants to be be more scientific and is therefore favoring smaller scale research on specific matters (links between eviction and later incarceration for example) rather than larger, more comprehensive theories like Durkheim's. It's like sociology as a field got bashful about being philosopohy's more outgoing brother and gave up on its dreams to get a shitty cubicle job crunching numbers.

[Anonymous No.10833754]

>>10830708
I started Elementary Forms of Religious Life but got bored.

[Anonymous No.10834113]

he criticized capitalisms effect on society and religion. and he thought societies had an intrinsic cohesive property, unlike weber who thought authority produces cohesion. no wonder.

[Anonymous No.10834184]

>>10830852
that's more similar to Fascist Italy than Germany

[Anonymous No.10834190]

>>10831014
>Durkheim basically thinks that elementary forms of religious organisation are more fundamental/socially prior to the economic base, so they are properly the first determining element.
That resonates very strongly with Carl Schmitt's political theology and Nietzsche's genealogical method.

[Anonymous No.10834780]

>>10830708

He is based. Read Suicide and Rules of the Sociological Method, moving on to The Elementary forms of Religious Life, or whatever the title is in English.

[Anonymous No.10835791]

>>10830748
That's one of the problems with reading old philosophers today, some of the things they said are just factually wrong.
For example:
>mental illness, depression, and suicide are caused by a sick society, not personal factors
We know that there is a genetic component to mental illness. We know that certain kinds of mental illness are measurable on a physical level. It would be very hard to make a case from today's standpoint that personal factors don't play the most significant role when it comes to "mental illness, depression and suicide".

[Anonymous No.10835808]

>>10830748
Most of the things you cited can be found on Marx's writings as well, and Durkheim never said "uncontrolled capitalism" as if you're trying to imply he recommended a controled version, he was criticizing capitalism

[Anonymous No.10835811]

>>10835808
Nevermind I just read the part where you talk about Nazi germany being an example of what Durkheim proposed, this is clearly bait

[Anonymous No.10835859]

Sociology is for brainlets and is certainly not /lit/
Take this garbage to
>>>/his/