Abstract
Puzzles over the nature of the individual mount, unanswered, in the course of the Rules and Suicide. The Baconian doctrine of idola supplies us with a picture of the nature of falsity in thinking about individual action, and of the inadequacies of intentional language. ‘Currents’, impulses, and the rest are the ‘scientific’ terms Durkheim himself used in action explanations, and these suggest a picture of the individual. His comments in the preface to the second edition of the Rules on the analogies between the psychological laws governing the combination of and “the manner in which social representations adhere to and repel one another, how they fuse or separate from one another, etc.” (1964, p. li; 1982, pp. 41–42; 1937, p. xix) and the laws of sociology governing collective representations are suggestive. But how do they fit together, and how do they fit into the logic of his argument and his practice? Other questions, of where the composition of causes occurs, and about the details of the causal mechanisms involved, of the relation between ‘impulses’, individual predispositions, and various social facts, arise from Durkheim’s own usages. His technical usages, particularly his statistical methods, also raise questions about his individual as a real, causal structure.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
The ‘Carnot engine’ consisted simply of a cylinder and piston, a working substance that he assumed to be a perfect gas, and two heat reserviors maintained at different temperatures. The new cycle incorporated the isothermal and adiabatic expansions and the isothermal compression of the steam engine, but Carnot added a final adiabatic compression in which motive power was consumed to heat the gas to its original, boiler temperature. In describing the engine’s properties, Carnot introduced two fundamental thermodynamic concepts, completeness and reversibility. At the end of each cycle the engine and the working substance returned to their original conditions” (Challey, 1970, p. 81).
Presumably some, if not most, of this resistance is ultimately social in origin (cf. his discussion of inhibition). Some resistance is a matter of individual “mental constitution” (1951, p. 323; 1930, p. 366 ).
When Durkheim argued that society breeds persons predisposed to particular collective wishes, it was on the basis of considerations like these. The mechanisms of the ‘breeding’ are obscure. What he seems to have had in mind is that what are called personality types or psychological types are misnamed — they are better conceived of as persons with a particular mix of more or less stable social impulses together with some rudimentary and highly general human predispositions. The latter he considered “vague and rudimentary” facts “far removed from the facts that need explanation ” (1964, p. 107; 1982, p. 132; 1937, p. 106. Cf. 1964, p. 106; 1982, p. 131; 1937, p. 105 ).
Completeness’ has this sense. It is true, Durkheim said,that society has no other active forces than individuals; but individuals by combining form a psychical existence of a new species, which consequently has its own manner of thinking and feeling. Of course the elementary qualities of which the social fact consists are present in germ in individual minds. But the social fact emerges from them only when they have been transformed by association since it is only then that it appears. Association itself is also an active factor productive of special effects. In itself it is therefore something new (1951, p. 310; 1930, p. 350 ).
The ‘special effects’ are the result of the transformation of forces, not their creation. Roscoe Hinkle, in an unpublished paper, Durkheim’s Effervescence and the “Origins” of Society’ (n.d.), shows the frequency with which Durkheim refers to the cyclical processes by which force is transformed from individual to social forms and back. The general pattern is best formulated by Durkheim in the course of arguing that in “moments of collective ferment… are born the great ideals upon which civilizations rest” (Durkheim, 1974, p. 91). But this is only part of the cycle. “Ideals could not survive if they were not periodically revived. This revivification is the function of religious or secular feasts and ceremonies, all public addresses in churches or schools, plays and exhibitions — in a word, whatever draws men together into an intellectual and moral communion” (Durkheim, 1974, p. 92).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1986 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Turner, S.P. (1986). Durkheim’s Individual. In: The Search for a Methodology of Social Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 92. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3461-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3461-5_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8417-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3461-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive