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Modernity's Myth of Facts: Emile Durkheim and the Politics of Knowledge Author(s): Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 121-145Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657665Accessed: 09-12-2015 17:06 UTC

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121 121

Modernity's myth of facts

Emile Durkheim and the politics of knowledge

TIMOTHY V. KAUFMAN-OSBORN Department of Political Science, Whitman College

To reconcile numbers with intelligence, education must become widespread. Everyone can participate in political power without endangering it, when

everyone has his share of that other collective good, intellectual capital (Emile Durkheim 1885).

Any campaign to alter conventional patterns of political education pre- supposes an account of its subject. This is so in a twofold sense because each such initiative entails a characterization of the knowledge whose cause it promotes as well as a representation of the agents who are to be constituted by it. It is, accordingly, specification of the desired rela- tionship between subject as content and subject as vehicle that informs the practice whose purpose is to tranform the abstractions of theory into the effective habits of acting agents.

It would be a mistake, though, to assume that a comprehensive and conclusive account of this relation is a prerequisite of engagement in the struggle to displace an established rival. Because such a fully devel- oped perspective is, by and large, an achievement called into being through conflict with competing doctrines, its systematic formulation is much more likely to follow than to precede the practice whose expres- sion it is later taken to be. However, because the rhetorical imperatives of opposition, at any given moment of time, require the assumption of a public posture of thoroughgoing consistency, whatever tensions and incompletenesses remain unresolved within a still unfolding self-under- standing must be denied candid disclosure. The securing of strategic advantage, in other words, requires persistent effort not simply to ac- cumulate the material resources of power, but also to suppress the sources of ambiguity that, if acknowledged, might render problematic the identities of those to whom a political program of pedagogical reconstruction appeals.

Theory and Society 17:121-147 (1988) ? Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht - Printed in the Netherlands

Modernity's myth of facts

Emile Durkheim and the politics of knowledge

TIMOTHY V. KAUFMAN-OSBORN Department of Political Science, Whitman College

To reconcile numbers with intelligence, education must become widespread. Everyone can participate in political power without endangering it, when

everyone has his share of that other collective good, intellectual capital (Emile Durkheim 1885).

Any campaign to alter conventional patterns of political education pre- supposes an account of its subject. This is so in a twofold sense because each such initiative entails a characterization of the knowledge whose cause it promotes as well as a representation of the agents who are to be constituted by it. It is, accordingly, specification of the desired rela- tionship between subject as content and subject as vehicle that informs the practice whose purpose is to tranform the abstractions of theory into the effective habits of acting agents.

It would be a mistake, though, to assume that a comprehensive and conclusive account of this relation is a prerequisite of engagement in the struggle to displace an established rival. Because such a fully devel- oped perspective is, by and large, an achievement called into being through conflict with competing doctrines, its systematic formulation is much more likely to follow than to precede the practice whose expres- sion it is later taken to be. However, because the rhetorical imperatives of opposition, at any given moment of time, require the assumption of a public posture of thoroughgoing consistency, whatever tensions and incompletenesses remain unresolved within a still unfolding self-under- standing must be denied candid disclosure. The securing of strategic advantage, in other words, requires persistent effort not simply to ac- cumulate the material resources of power, but also to suppress the sources of ambiguity that, if acknowledged, might render problematic the identities of those to whom a political program of pedagogical reconstruction appeals.

Theory and Society 17:121-147 (1988) ? Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht - Printed in the Netherlands

This content downloaded from 199.89.174.138 on Wed, 09 Dec 2015 17:06:45 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

122 122

It is this perspective that informs the following reading of Emile Durk- heim's account of the secular political education that is essential to the unity of the modem state. Its full formulation requires of Durkheim, first, an account of the ideational constructs through which science reveals the facts of the social world; second, an indication of the way in which these constructs become present within the consciousness of agents; third, a description of the bonds that these constructs establish between the subjects of the modem state; and, fourth, a legitimation of the relation of inequality that obtains between the educator, i.e., the scientific community, and the educated, i.e., the non-scientific public.

Because Durkheim's understanding of each of these points incor- porates tensions that are never finally resolved, his intellectual career manifests an ever-deepening theoretical crisis whose precise evolution is best regarded as a consequence of the sustained presence in his thought of two competing imperatives. On the one hand, as a self-iden- tified heir of liberal political discourse, Durkheim believes it vital that every form of legitimate rule, including that of scientific facts, be grounded in the freely willed consent of its subjects. On the other hand, as the founder of a new science of society, he simultaneously believes that if the truth discovered through sociological inquiry is effectively to discipline unruly liberal selves, then these same facts must be rendered independent of the will of those they constrain. Because each effort Durkheim makes to meet the demands of one serves to undercut those of the other, this tension, which is most fully expressed in Durkheim's struggle to acknowledge and yet confine the autonomy that defines the modem self, creates an insoluble dilemma. The result is a theoretical dynamic whose inability to contain its own contrarieties culminates in Durkheim's advocacy of a doctrine of political education that violates his requirement that modem society be constituted as a non-coercive union of free and rational agents.1

Ostracizing the legislator

Durkheim's familiar characterization of the social fact appears less prosaic when read as an assault upon that pivotal figure of classical political theory, the founder. Although formally absent from his later methodological writings, this explicitly political dimension of Durk- heim's early thought is accorded a central place in the Latin thesis that he composes in 1892 on the question of Montesquieu's contribution to the emergence of social science. There, Durkheim posits as his object

It is this perspective that informs the following reading of Emile Durk- heim's account of the secular political education that is essential to the unity of the modem state. Its full formulation requires of Durkheim, first, an account of the ideational constructs through which science reveals the facts of the social world; second, an indication of the way in which these constructs become present within the consciousness of agents; third, a description of the bonds that these constructs establish between the subjects of the modem state; and, fourth, a legitimation of the relation of inequality that obtains between the educator, i.e., the scientific community, and the educated, i.e., the non-scientific public.

Because Durkheim's understanding of each of these points incor- porates tensions that are never finally resolved, his intellectual career manifests an ever-deepening theoretical crisis whose precise evolution is best regarded as a consequence of the sustained presence in his thought of two competing imperatives. On the one hand, as a self-iden- tified heir of liberal political discourse, Durkheim believes it vital that every form of legitimate rule, including that of scientific facts, be grounded in the freely willed consent of its subjects. On the other hand, as the founder of a new science of society, he simultaneously believes that if the truth discovered through sociological inquiry is effectively to discipline unruly liberal selves, then these same facts must be rendered independent of the will of those they constrain. Because each effort Durkheim makes to meet the demands of one serves to undercut those of the other, this tension, which is most fully expressed in Durkheim's struggle to acknowledge and yet confine the autonomy that defines the modem self, creates an insoluble dilemma. The result is a theoretical dynamic whose inability to contain its own contrarieties culminates in Durkheim's advocacy of a doctrine of political education that violates his requirement that modem society be constituted as a non-coercive union of free and rational agents.1

Ostracizing the legislator

Durkheim's familiar characterization of the social fact appears less prosaic when read as an assault upon that pivotal figure of classical political theory, the founder. Although formally absent from his later methodological writings, this explicitly political dimension of Durk- heim's early thought is accorded a central place in the Latin thesis that he composes in 1892 on the question of Montesquieu's contribution to the emergence of social science. There, Durkheim posits as his object

This content downloaded from 199.89.174.138 on Wed, 09 Dec 2015 17:06:45 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

123 123

of critique antiquity's mythical representation of the legislator's prowess as "the source from which all social life springs: "This is the origin of the widespread superstition that a lawgiver endowed with almost limitless power is able to devise, modify, and discard laws as he pleases."2 Glorified as exclusive author of the institutional forms that define a given city, the founder embodies the classical illusion that the members of a collectivity constitute mere matter to be shaped to virtue by the prerogative of a solitary actor.

To dispel this creature of an enchanted consciousness, Durkheim insists that the legislator's claim to omnipotence, like that ascribed to the Christian God,3 expresses nothing more than the hypertrophied subjectivity of a self that takes its own creation to be an uncaused cause: "If the same citizens under a different ruler could produce a dif- ferent state, it would mean that the same cause, operating under the same circumstances, had the power to produce different effects; there would be no rational tie between social phenomena."4 Presupposing the infinite plasticity of the world, the legend of the founder denies the reality "of any determinate order in human societies" and hence renders inconceivable the very possibility of science: "Where things are infinitely pliable, nothing impels us to observe them and they offer nothing that lends itself to observation."5 This phantom must be ostracized from organized social life.

Classical political philosophy must be banished as well. Its complicity in perpetuating a heroic representation of the subject is apparent in its elaboration of theoretical constructs whose purpose is "not to offer us as true an image of nature as possible but to confront our imagination with the idea of a perfect society, a model to be imitated."6 Rooted in "spontaneous inclination" and prompted by concerns of immediate "utility and harmfulness," these utopian fancies possess no greater validity than do those of "poets and storytellers;" and they merit only "such authority as we are willing to accord them."7 For beneath the pretense of a metaphysics that represents the lawgiver as the bearer of theory whose insinuation within the world invests practice with its rationality rests the reality of a capricious will.

Montesquieu's contribution to the emasculation of the founder and the political theorist consists in his anticipation of the sociological con- cepts of law and type: "Once the existence of such elements is granted, our lawgiver vanishes and his legend with him."8 Montesquieu's formu- lation of the former foreshadows modernity's realization that human

of critique antiquity's mythical representation of the legislator's prowess as "the source from which all social life springs: "This is the origin of the widespread superstition that a lawgiver endowed with almost limitless power is able to devise, modify, and discard laws as he pleases."2 Glorified as exclusive author of the institutional forms that define a given city, the founder embodies the classical illusion that the members of a collectivity constitute mere matter to be shaped to virtue by the prerogative of a solitary actor.

To dispel this creature of an enchanted consciousness, Durkheim insists that the legislator's claim to omnipotence, like that ascribed to the Christian God,3 expresses nothing more than the hypertrophied subjectivity of a self that takes its own creation to be an uncaused cause: "If the same citizens under a different ruler could produce a dif- ferent state, it would mean that the same cause, operating under the same circumstances, had the power to produce different effects; there would be no rational tie between social phenomena."4 Presupposing the infinite plasticity of the world, the legend of the founder denies the reality "of any determinate order in human societies" and hence renders inconceivable the very possibility of science: "Where things are infinitely pliable, nothing impels us to observe them and they offer nothing that lends itself to observation."5 This phantom must be ostracized from organized social life.

Classical political philosophy must be banished as well. Its complicity in perpetuating a heroic representation of the subject is apparent in its elaboration of theoretical constructs whose purpose is "not to offer us as true an image of nature as possible but to confront our imagination with the idea of a perfect society, a model to be imitated."6 Rooted in "spontaneous inclination" and prompted by concerns of immediate "utility and harmfulness," these utopian fancies possess no greater validity than do those of "poets and storytellers;" and they merit only "such authority as we are willing to accord them."7 For beneath the pretense of a metaphysics that represents the lawgiver as the bearer of theory whose insinuation within the world invests practice with its rationality rests the reality of a capricious will.

Montesquieu's contribution to the emasculation of the founder and the political theorist consists in his anticipation of the sociological con- cepts of law and type: "Once the existence of such elements is granted, our lawgiver vanishes and his legend with him."8 Montesquieu's formu- lation of the former foreshadows modernity's realization that human

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124 124

order derives "from custom, that is, from life itself, by a process of almost imperceptible development unrelated to the concerted inten- tions of legislators,"9 while his conception of the latter signifies the mind's newly acquired ability to conquer the diversity wrought by cus- tom through reduction of the plurality of societies to a finite number of determinate species. Humbling the unpredictable and subduing the heterogeneous, Montesquieu's constriction of the will's illusion of arbi- trary power renders social practice a possible object of scientific scru- tiny.

Although Durkheim does not recognize it in this essay, his attack upon antiquity's self-interpretation intimates a pedagogical problem with which his later writings will struggle. Specifically, it requires that he rethink the traditional question of how agents are to come to compre- hend the nature of the collectivity to which they are bound as members. On the classical (and most notably the Platonic) understanding, the analogy of techne renders the human world fully intelligible, if not to all of its inhabitants, then at least to its creator; for the presence of order is conceived as an artifact that embodies the antecedently conceptualized end of its maker qua craftsman. The possibility of political education, on this view, turns on the question of whether and in what form that

design or principle can be made present within the souls of those who constitute its realization. This formulation, however, is unavailable to Durkheim in virtue of his contention that because "social institutions follow from the nature of things, they do not depend upon the will of

any citizen or citizens."10 Hence he must eventually ask how members can come to grasp a common world whose character is not understood

through reference to either the deliberate purposes of any agent, whether singular or collective, or the common-sense metaphors fur- nished by the practice of craft.

Facts as tyrants

This question is not fully appreciated by Durkheim when he defends his second thesis, The Division of Labor in Society, in 1893; and it is for this reason that he finds unproblematic the characterization of social facts suggested two years later by his Rules of Sociological Method. In the former, Durkheim argues that because solidaristic consciousness of the sort definitive of mechanically ordered cultures "becomes weaker and vaguer" within contemporary liberal regimes, its power "to steer the individual in a collective direction can only be feeble." ' Moreover,

order derives "from custom, that is, from life itself, by a process of almost imperceptible development unrelated to the concerted inten- tions of legislators,"9 while his conception of the latter signifies the mind's newly acquired ability to conquer the diversity wrought by cus- tom through reduction of the plurality of societies to a finite number of determinate species. Humbling the unpredictable and subduing the heterogeneous, Montesquieu's constriction of the will's illusion of arbi- trary power renders social practice a possible object of scientific scru- tiny.

Although Durkheim does not recognize it in this essay, his attack upon antiquity's self-interpretation intimates a pedagogical problem with which his later writings will struggle. Specifically, it requires that he rethink the traditional question of how agents are to come to compre- hend the nature of the collectivity to which they are bound as members. On the classical (and most notably the Platonic) understanding, the analogy of techne renders the human world fully intelligible, if not to all of its inhabitants, then at least to its creator; for the presence of order is conceived as an artifact that embodies the antecedently conceptualized end of its maker qua craftsman. The possibility of political education, on this view, turns on the question of whether and in what form that

design or principle can be made present within the souls of those who constitute its realization. This formulation, however, is unavailable to Durkheim in virtue of his contention that because "social institutions follow from the nature of things, they do not depend upon the will of

any citizen or citizens."10 Hence he must eventually ask how members can come to grasp a common world whose character is not understood

through reference to either the deliberate purposes of any agent, whether singular or collective, or the common-sense metaphors fur- nished by the practice of craft.

Facts as tyrants

This question is not fully appreciated by Durkheim when he defends his second thesis, The Division of Labor in Society, in 1893; and it is for this reason that he finds unproblematic the characterization of social facts suggested two years later by his Rules of Sociological Method. In the former, Durkheim argues that because solidaristic consciousness of the sort definitive of mechanically ordered cultures "becomes weaker and vaguer" within contemporary liberal regimes, its power "to steer the individual in a collective direction can only be feeble." ' Moreover,

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125 125

liberal political theory's representation of society as "a huge constella- tion in which each star moves in its orbit without disturbing the motion of neighbouring stars" entails its commitment to a conception of rights whose "function is not to link together the different parts of society, but on the contrary to detach them from one another, and mark out clearly the barriers separating them."12 The achievement of integration is not significantly impaired, though, because the legally regulated division of labor, as the tacit presupposition of order amongst otherwise egoistic beings, now satisfies the need once met by substantive dogma.

It is nonetheless important to note, Durkheim insists, that modernity's celebration of "the dignity of the human person" reveals that there is in fact one "area in which the common consciousness has grown stronger."13 Yet this "common faith," whose most significant manifesta- tion Durkheim identifies with the right of each individual to express his or her autonomy in free selection of a specialized occupational role, is quite unlike that unifying less complex forms of order; for it is "to our- selves" rather than "to society"14 that worship of its idol binds us. Thus, although this secular religion presupposes an "ideal of... brother- hood"15 predicated upon an abstract sense of universal humanity, its tendency to confirm rather than challenge the egoism of the modem self means that Durkheim, at this period in time, finds no need to quali- fy his belief in the existence of an inverse relationship between the advance of specialization and the power of collective norms to regulate the conduct of all members of a given society.

That modernity does not require deliberate inculcation of a substantive civil religion to complement the solidarity produced by the division of labor is apparent in the Rules' account of faits sociaux. There, Montes-

quieu's ideas of law and type are toughened up so as to eradicate any lingering remnant of the original etymological connection between the terms "fact" and "deed." So conceived, social reality takes on the appearance of a constellation of "things, like all other things in nature," i.e., as externalized and obdurate givens that defy actors with their power to "resist the human will."16 The order that their conjunction establishes is natural not in the Platonic sense that it, as informed mat- ter, imperfectly expresses timeless being, but rather in the sense that its evolutionary generation cannot be explained through reference to any form of reflection that asserts its priority over the practices that call such reality into existence.

liberal political theory's representation of society as "a huge constella- tion in which each star moves in its orbit without disturbing the motion of neighbouring stars" entails its commitment to a conception of rights whose "function is not to link together the different parts of society, but on the contrary to detach them from one another, and mark out clearly the barriers separating them."12 The achievement of integration is not significantly impaired, though, because the legally regulated division of labor, as the tacit presupposition of order amongst otherwise egoistic beings, now satisfies the need once met by substantive dogma.

It is nonetheless important to note, Durkheim insists, that modernity's celebration of "the dignity of the human person" reveals that there is in fact one "area in which the common consciousness has grown stronger."13 Yet this "common faith," whose most significant manifesta- tion Durkheim identifies with the right of each individual to express his or her autonomy in free selection of a specialized occupational role, is quite unlike that unifying less complex forms of order; for it is "to our- selves" rather than "to society"14 that worship of its idol binds us. Thus, although this secular religion presupposes an "ideal of... brother- hood"15 predicated upon an abstract sense of universal humanity, its tendency to confirm rather than challenge the egoism of the modem self means that Durkheim, at this period in time, finds no need to quali- fy his belief in the existence of an inverse relationship between the advance of specialization and the power of collective norms to regulate the conduct of all members of a given society.

That modernity does not require deliberate inculcation of a substantive civil religion to complement the solidarity produced by the division of labor is apparent in the Rules' account of faits sociaux. There, Montes-

quieu's ideas of law and type are toughened up so as to eradicate any lingering remnant of the original etymological connection between the terms "fact" and "deed." So conceived, social reality takes on the appearance of a constellation of "things, like all other things in nature," i.e., as externalized and obdurate givens that defy actors with their power to "resist the human will."16 The order that their conjunction establishes is natural not in the Platonic sense that it, as informed mat- ter, imperfectly expresses timeless being, but rather in the sense that its evolutionary generation cannot be explained through reference to any form of reflection that asserts its priority over the practices that call such reality into existence.

Conceiving of facts in this fashion, Durkheim argues that the initial Conceiving of facts in this fashion, Durkheim argues that the initial

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political task of sociology is to persuade liberalism's isolated individual of the factual rather than the fabricated character of the social world and so prompt that agent to spurn social contract theory whose democratization of antiquity's lawgiver is apparent in its representation of social reality as "an artifact, a machine wholly constructed by the hands of men."17 Only after the chastened will grants that this myth is in fact nothing more than a "skilfull device" that conceals the non-conven- tional source of "the snares into which" it "stumbled" will that will "renounce the unlimited power over the social order that for so long"18 it ascribed to itself.

In the Rules, though, Durkheim's own conceptual apparatus renders him unable to show how sociology might, in a non-coercive fashion, render the imperative quality of social facts a universal attribute of a liberal citizenry's collective consciousness. Why this is so becomes apparent when he delineates the relation between scientific and un- scientific apprehensions of faits sociaux. Uncritically appropriating Francis Bacon's critique of the Idols in the Novum Organum, Durk- heim credits method with the capacity to rid inquiry of the errors otherwise introduced by a common sense whose "ideological" prompt- ings encourage "the mind, feeling completely unchecked," to "give(s) rein to limitless ambitions."19 Scientific concepts, so purified, are simply non-distorting mirrors that capture the fundamental features of social reality within clear and distinct explanatory ideas that owe nothing to the mediation furnished by non-scientific understandings; "social phenomena must ... be considered in themselves, detached from the conscious beings who form their mental representations of them."20

Whatever its theoretical limitations, this crude positivism, whose presence is indicated by Durkheim's repeated use of the terms "nature," "substance" and "essence" to describe science's grasp of social phe- nomena, provides him with a purchase point that legitimates the politi- cal dimension of the sociological project; its cognition "immediately grounded firmly in reality,"21 science is authorized to "direct the course of moral life."22 However, because commonsensical representations possess no necessary "relationship to the intrinsic reality of the object to which they correspond,"23 this direction must presuppose the exis- tence of a mutually exclusive and dichotomous gulf between the knowl- edge of the educator and the opinion of the educated; the facts of society "present themselves to the sociologist in completely different

political task of sociology is to persuade liberalism's isolated individual of the factual rather than the fabricated character of the social world and so prompt that agent to spurn social contract theory whose democratization of antiquity's lawgiver is apparent in its representation of social reality as "an artifact, a machine wholly constructed by the hands of men."17 Only after the chastened will grants that this myth is in fact nothing more than a "skilfull device" that conceals the non-conven- tional source of "the snares into which" it "stumbled" will that will "renounce the unlimited power over the social order that for so long"18 it ascribed to itself.

In the Rules, though, Durkheim's own conceptual apparatus renders him unable to show how sociology might, in a non-coercive fashion, render the imperative quality of social facts a universal attribute of a liberal citizenry's collective consciousness. Why this is so becomes apparent when he delineates the relation between scientific and un- scientific apprehensions of faits sociaux. Uncritically appropriating Francis Bacon's critique of the Idols in the Novum Organum, Durk- heim credits method with the capacity to rid inquiry of the errors otherwise introduced by a common sense whose "ideological" prompt- ings encourage "the mind, feeling completely unchecked," to "give(s) rein to limitless ambitions."19 Scientific concepts, so purified, are simply non-distorting mirrors that capture the fundamental features of social reality within clear and distinct explanatory ideas that owe nothing to the mediation furnished by non-scientific understandings; "social phenomena must ... be considered in themselves, detached from the conscious beings who form their mental representations of them."20

Whatever its theoretical limitations, this crude positivism, whose presence is indicated by Durkheim's repeated use of the terms "nature," "substance" and "essence" to describe science's grasp of social phe- nomena, provides him with a purchase point that legitimates the politi- cal dimension of the sociological project; its cognition "immediately grounded firmly in reality,"21 science is authorized to "direct the course of moral life."22 However, because commonsensical representations possess no necessary "relationship to the intrinsic reality of the object to which they correspond,"23 this direction must presuppose the exis- tence of a mutually exclusive and dichotomous gulf between the knowl- edge of the educator and the opinion of the educated; the facts of society "present themselves to the sociologist in completely different

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terms than to the masses."24 This, in turn, implies that there does not and cannot exist the foundation of shared intelligibility that might otherwise enable the former, through an appeal to reason, to persuade the latter that society, as disclosed by sociology, is "qualified to play the part of legislator."25 Hence the relation of scientific knowledge to con- ventional belief, whose "tyrannical ... sway over the mind of the ordi- nary person" guarantees that it will neither accede to correction by the facts nor "tolerate its scientific examination,"26 can only be one of forced displacement; the pronouncements of the scientific community must appear to its extra-scientific public as edicts whose revelation of an unperceived reality violate the web of commonsensical meaning that constitutes everyday life.

Therefore, what Durkheim calls "education" in the Rules can only take the form of a "continual effort" to cause its subject to submit to "pene- trat(ion)" by "external" facts that "are endued with a compelling and coercive power by virtue of which, whether he wishes it or not, they impose ... ways of seeing and acting which he himself would not have arrived at spontaneously."27 As such, their rule must confront citizens reared on Enlightenment liberalism as a constellation of heteronomous hindrances whose constraint is illegitimate; "(f)ar from being a product of our will," the "moulds into which we are forced to cast our conduct ... determine it from without."28 Durkheim's methodological injunc- tion, which urges the scientific mind to surrender itself to nature's object, is thus transformed into a political mandate that justifies sub- mission of the liberal ego to rule by uncomprehended and unauthor- ized givens.29

Because Durkheim cannot conceive of education in terms other than these, and because he remains more or less content with the undemand- ing notion of individual autonomy suggested by The Division of Labor, he is able in good conscience to argue, at the close of the Rules, that only by assuming a posture of "special competence" can sociology con- vince a liberal citizenry to acknowledge science's exclusive right to reform social reality. To secure public submission to intervention that appears to proceed by artifice but is in fact merely a restoration of the natural, Durkheim urges sociology to "renounce worldly success, so to speak, and take on the esoteric character which befits all science"; for sociology can "gain in dignity and authority what it will perhaps lose in popularity"30 only by proclaiming its expert ability to acquire knowl- edge of that which is mysterious to the uninitiated. Unable to indicate

terms than to the masses."24 This, in turn, implies that there does not and cannot exist the foundation of shared intelligibility that might otherwise enable the former, through an appeal to reason, to persuade the latter that society, as disclosed by sociology, is "qualified to play the part of legislator."25 Hence the relation of scientific knowledge to con- ventional belief, whose "tyrannical ... sway over the mind of the ordi- nary person" guarantees that it will neither accede to correction by the facts nor "tolerate its scientific examination,"26 can only be one of forced displacement; the pronouncements of the scientific community must appear to its extra-scientific public as edicts whose revelation of an unperceived reality violate the web of commonsensical meaning that constitutes everyday life.

Therefore, what Durkheim calls "education" in the Rules can only take the form of a "continual effort" to cause its subject to submit to "pene- trat(ion)" by "external" facts that "are endued with a compelling and coercive power by virtue of which, whether he wishes it or not, they impose ... ways of seeing and acting which he himself would not have arrived at spontaneously."27 As such, their rule must confront citizens reared on Enlightenment liberalism as a constellation of heteronomous hindrances whose constraint is illegitimate; "(f)ar from being a product of our will," the "moulds into which we are forced to cast our conduct ... determine it from without."28 Durkheim's methodological injunc- tion, which urges the scientific mind to surrender itself to nature's object, is thus transformed into a political mandate that justifies sub- mission of the liberal ego to rule by uncomprehended and unauthor- ized givens.29

Because Durkheim cannot conceive of education in terms other than these, and because he remains more or less content with the undemand- ing notion of individual autonomy suggested by The Division of Labor, he is able in good conscience to argue, at the close of the Rules, that only by assuming a posture of "special competence" can sociology con- vince a liberal citizenry to acknowledge science's exclusive right to reform social reality. To secure public submission to intervention that appears to proceed by artifice but is in fact merely a restoration of the natural, Durkheim urges sociology to "renounce worldly success, so to speak, and take on the esoteric character which befits all science"; for sociology can "gain in dignity and authority what it will perhaps lose in popularity"30 only by proclaiming its expert ability to acquire knowl- edge of that which is mysterious to the uninitiated. Unable to indicate

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how the facts known by science might become legitimate objects of public will, Durkheim turns to the construction of appearances in order to ensure rule of the real.31

Acknowledging the autonomous self

"Must one view discipline simply as an external, palpable police force, whose single raison d'etre is to prevent certain behaviors and which, beyond such preventive action, has no other function?"32 The suspect legitimacy of facts so conceived, which cannot help but elicit "insupera- ble resistance in people,"33 draws Durkheim, in the years between publication of the Rules and delivery of his lectures on moral education in 1902-1903, toward the conclusion that propitiation of modernity's idol requires not simply the opportunity to select a specialized vocation but also the right to grant (and hence, by implication, to withhold) consent to the facts by which society is ruled. Unlike St. Simon, Durk- heim comes to understand that in a society characterized by the diffu- sion of effective power among a multiplicity of functional groups the achievement of order requires more than the mere displacement of

politics by the administration of things; and, unlike Comte, he realizes that the persistent need for an agency that manages the distinctively common affairs of society will prove inconsistent with the legacy of liberalism if it is satisfied exclusively through the vehicle of a techno- cratic state that manipulates the conditions of collective life on the basis of knowledge left unratified by the citizenry it governs.34 The Division of Labor's preoccupation with the legitimacy of those facts that constitute what Durkheim had called the "forced division of labor" is now generalized as a question concerning the right of any fact to rule those who are its subjects but not its authors.

The concerns are foreshadowed in the response to the Dreyfus affair that Durkheim composes in 1898.35 In "Individualism and the Intellec- tuals," Durkheim tacitly admits that the interdependence produced by specialization of function does not, in and of itself, generate solidarity. Unwilling, though, to concede that only force has the capacity to inject order into modern societies, Durkheim finds it necessary, first, to

repudiate the Division of Labor's contention that modernity's worship of the individual cannot "constitute a truly social link"36 because it does not contain "all that is required to ... bring about that communion of minds and wills which is a first condition of any social life";37 and, second, to ask how the commitment of liberal societies to the principles

how the facts known by science might become legitimate objects of public will, Durkheim turns to the construction of appearances in order to ensure rule of the real.31

Acknowledging the autonomous self

"Must one view discipline simply as an external, palpable police force, whose single raison d'etre is to prevent certain behaviors and which, beyond such preventive action, has no other function?"32 The suspect legitimacy of facts so conceived, which cannot help but elicit "insupera- ble resistance in people,"33 draws Durkheim, in the years between publication of the Rules and delivery of his lectures on moral education in 1902-1903, toward the conclusion that propitiation of modernity's idol requires not simply the opportunity to select a specialized vocation but also the right to grant (and hence, by implication, to withhold) consent to the facts by which society is ruled. Unlike St. Simon, Durk- heim comes to understand that in a society characterized by the diffu- sion of effective power among a multiplicity of functional groups the achievement of order requires more than the mere displacement of

politics by the administration of things; and, unlike Comte, he realizes that the persistent need for an agency that manages the distinctively common affairs of society will prove inconsistent with the legacy of liberalism if it is satisfied exclusively through the vehicle of a techno- cratic state that manipulates the conditions of collective life on the basis of knowledge left unratified by the citizenry it governs.34 The Division of Labor's preoccupation with the legitimacy of those facts that constitute what Durkheim had called the "forced division of labor" is now generalized as a question concerning the right of any fact to rule those who are its subjects but not its authors.

The concerns are foreshadowed in the response to the Dreyfus affair that Durkheim composes in 1898.35 In "Individualism and the Intellec- tuals," Durkheim tacitly admits that the interdependence produced by specialization of function does not, in and of itself, generate solidarity. Unwilling, though, to concede that only force has the capacity to inject order into modern societies, Durkheim finds it necessary, first, to

repudiate the Division of Labor's contention that modernity's worship of the individual cannot "constitute a truly social link"36 because it does not contain "all that is required to ... bring about that communion of minds and wills which is a first condition of any social life";37 and, second, to ask how the commitment of liberal societies to the principles

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of personal dignity, individual rights, equality of opportunity, and a form of social justice that condemns reliance upon force, whether natural or ideological, in the conduct of social relations might be made to inform all spheres of collective practice: "(H)enceforth this is the only system of beliefs which can ensure the moral unity of the country."38

Recognizing that the "cult of man has as its primary dogma the autono- my of reason and as its primary rite the doctrine of free inquiry,"39 Durkheim grants that its deliberate inculcation entails that citizens "understand the reasons that justify"40 and explain the objective condi- tions of their unity with one another: "Today, everyone acknowledges, at least in theory, that never in any case should a predetermined mode of thought be arbitrarily imposed on us, even in the name of moral authority. It is not only a rule of logic but of morality that our reason should accept as true only that which it itself has spontaneously recog- nized as such."41 Unlike the subject of classical political thought whose will need not be exercised in order to ensure the goodness of the matter shaped to form by the legislator's knowledge, the modem citizen can- not remain a passive vehicle through which social facts realize the rational; the objectivity of these facts, if their rule is to prove not merely just but also legitimate, must be subjectively apprehended and desired.

The understanding that enables Durkheim to couple his respect for the cognitive rights of the modem self to his conviction that that self's discipline requires deference to the dictates of scientific rationality is one that describes facts not as externalized impediments to volition, but as intangible ideational entities whose internalization by agents constitutes their identities. Although facts, thus construed, still possess the attributes of things inasmuch as they are not the product of deliber- ate design and so "determine conduct imperatively from sources out- side ourselves,"42 their status as meaningful entities enables them to bridge the gap between subject and object that had proven so political- ly problematic in the Rules:

(W)e cannot become attached to an external thing, whatever its nature, without representing it to ourselves, without having an idea of it, a sentiment about it, no matter how confused. By virtue of this fact alone ... it becomes in certain respects internal.... Thus - as with the symbolic representation without which it would mean nothing to us - the object becomes an element of ourselves, a state of our consciousness.43

of personal dignity, individual rights, equality of opportunity, and a form of social justice that condemns reliance upon force, whether natural or ideological, in the conduct of social relations might be made to inform all spheres of collective practice: "(H)enceforth this is the only system of beliefs which can ensure the moral unity of the country."38

Recognizing that the "cult of man has as its primary dogma the autono- my of reason and as its primary rite the doctrine of free inquiry,"39 Durkheim grants that its deliberate inculcation entails that citizens "understand the reasons that justify"40 and explain the objective condi- tions of their unity with one another: "Today, everyone acknowledges, at least in theory, that never in any case should a predetermined mode of thought be arbitrarily imposed on us, even in the name of moral authority. It is not only a rule of logic but of morality that our reason should accept as true only that which it itself has spontaneously recog- nized as such."41 Unlike the subject of classical political thought whose will need not be exercised in order to ensure the goodness of the matter shaped to form by the legislator's knowledge, the modem citizen can- not remain a passive vehicle through which social facts realize the rational; the objectivity of these facts, if their rule is to prove not merely just but also legitimate, must be subjectively apprehended and desired.

The understanding that enables Durkheim to couple his respect for the cognitive rights of the modem self to his conviction that that self's discipline requires deference to the dictates of scientific rationality is one that describes facts not as externalized impediments to volition, but as intangible ideational entities whose internalization by agents constitutes their identities. Although facts, thus construed, still possess the attributes of things inasmuch as they are not the product of deliber- ate design and so "determine conduct imperatively from sources out- side ourselves,"42 their status as meaningful entities enables them to bridge the gap between subject and object that had proven so political- ly problematic in the Rules:

(W)e cannot become attached to an external thing, whatever its nature, without representing it to ourselves, without having an idea of it, a sentiment about it, no matter how confused. By virtue of this fact alone ... it becomes in certain respects internal.... Thus - as with the symbolic representation without which it would mean nothing to us - the object becomes an element of ourselves, a state of our consciousness.43

This transformation of 'faits sociaux" into "representations collectives" This transformation of 'faits sociaux" into "representations collectives"

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renders plausible Durkheim's claim that if the socially created meaning that establishes a given fact's intelligibility is regarded as both desirable and obligatory, then, in embracing it, "we ... become attached to our- selves."44 He thereby overcomes the legitimation dilemma of the Rules by showing that submission to the dictates of conventional morality, as critically reconstructed by science, constitutes not "passive resignation but ... enlightened allegiance."45 Identifying the achievement of "a more complete knowledge of things" with the acquisition of self-knowl- edge, Durkheim finds it possible to argue that we "fashion"46 our autonomy by becoming subject to a scientifically-informed political education. The reality of the subjective will, understood as the faculty whose proclivity for precipitous conduct threatens the persistence of order, is declawed through its absorption within rational thought; but its appearance is retained so as to render that order legitimate in the eyes of a liberal citizenry.

This theoretical coup, however, unsettles other dimensions of Durk- heim's thought. If meaningfulness is an intrinsic property of social facts qua collective representations, then Durkheim may not argue, as he had in the Rules, that science knows its objects independent of all sym- bolization; and this, in turn, forces a reformulation of that work's posi- tivist insistence upon the radical disjunction between knowledge and common sense. Acknowledging that science can no longer affirm its unmediated access to the ontological foundations of society, Durkheim rejects his earlier contention that the aim of science is to "substitut(e)" its transparent apprehension of social reality for "ideological" beliefs; and he holds instead that "the point of the method we have been pur- suing ... is to clarify the confused, popular notions of morality,... with which we must begin and to which we must always return," by trans- forming them "into precise and clear-cut notions."47 Assuming the posture of a Socratic educator whose purpose is "to help the age to be more aware of itself,"48 i.e., to bring to full self-consciousness the truth already present, although inarticulate, within common sense, science begins to sink into the society it hopes to rule and so finds its autonomy as well as its capacity for self-authorization ever more problematic.

Superfluous science?

The modification of social science's self-understanding introduced by Durkheim's lectures on moral education reveals its full disruptive potential in his last major work, The Elementary Forms of the Religious

renders plausible Durkheim's claim that if the socially created meaning that establishes a given fact's intelligibility is regarded as both desirable and obligatory, then, in embracing it, "we ... become attached to our- selves."44 He thereby overcomes the legitimation dilemma of the Rules by showing that submission to the dictates of conventional morality, as critically reconstructed by science, constitutes not "passive resignation but ... enlightened allegiance."45 Identifying the achievement of "a more complete knowledge of things" with the acquisition of self-knowl- edge, Durkheim finds it possible to argue that we "fashion"46 our autonomy by becoming subject to a scientifically-informed political education. The reality of the subjective will, understood as the faculty whose proclivity for precipitous conduct threatens the persistence of order, is declawed through its absorption within rational thought; but its appearance is retained so as to render that order legitimate in the eyes of a liberal citizenry.

This theoretical coup, however, unsettles other dimensions of Durk- heim's thought. If meaningfulness is an intrinsic property of social facts qua collective representations, then Durkheim may not argue, as he had in the Rules, that science knows its objects independent of all sym- bolization; and this, in turn, forces a reformulation of that work's posi- tivist insistence upon the radical disjunction between knowledge and common sense. Acknowledging that science can no longer affirm its unmediated access to the ontological foundations of society, Durkheim rejects his earlier contention that the aim of science is to "substitut(e)" its transparent apprehension of social reality for "ideological" beliefs; and he holds instead that "the point of the method we have been pur- suing ... is to clarify the confused, popular notions of morality,... with which we must begin and to which we must always return," by trans- forming them "into precise and clear-cut notions."47 Assuming the posture of a Socratic educator whose purpose is "to help the age to be more aware of itself,"48 i.e., to bring to full self-consciousness the truth already present, although inarticulate, within common sense, science begins to sink into the society it hopes to rule and so finds its autonomy as well as its capacity for self-authorization ever more problematic.

Superfluous science?

The modification of social science's self-understanding introduced by Durkheim's lectures on moral education reveals its full disruptive potential in his last major work, The Elementary Forms of the Religious

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131 131

Life, published in 1912. There, the epistemological independence of scientific rationality is further attenuated by Durkheim's demonstration of the derivation of all forms of thought, including modem science itself, from specific configurations of collective life. This argument, which posits the existence of a relationship of isomorphic dependence between the institutional forms and the logical categories of any given culture, implies that the enterprise of science is simply another object of analysis that, like any social fact, can be investigated with the tools of scientific method. But this, of course, renders even more problematic the sense in which science is autonomous from and hence authorized to pass critical judgment upon common sense's adequacy. For science, if it is to sustain its claim to the possession of non-relativistic criteria of truth, must explain how it has abstracted itself from and thereby come to stand outside the historical processes of which it is, and continues to be, the product; it must, in short, justify its claim to know the form of which it is the matter.49

To solve this dilemma, Durkheim suggests that truth is a function not of objectivity, as the Rules had affirmed, but rather of impersonality. The possibility of scientific knowledge, he argues, is predicated upon the existence of a community of inquirers whose joint commitment to the rules of scientific procedure enables its members to suppress the idio- syncratic effects otherwise produced by private perception and pre- judice and so arrive at concepts that are true not because they perfectly mirror their objects, but rather because they are held in common. A true concept, then, is one whose excision of specific points of view ensures that it can be shared by all who engage in formally identical practices of rule-governed observation and reasoning.

Given the thrust of Durkheim's sociology of knowledge, this displace- ment of objectivity by impersonality as the criterion of truth must imply that the modern world has itself developed the morphological preconditions that make this abstraction conceptually possible. The very possibility of scientific knowledge is rooted in the evolution of a kind of collective existence that has progressively dissociated itself from the more particularistic forms of social organization characteristic of cultures that, of necessity, proved incapable of science:

If logical thought tends to rid itself more and more of the subjective and per- sonal elements which it still retains from its origin, it is not because extra- social factors have intervened; it is much rather because a social life of a new sort is developing. It is this international life which has already resulted in universalizing religious beliefs.50

Life, published in 1912. There, the epistemological independence of scientific rationality is further attenuated by Durkheim's demonstration of the derivation of all forms of thought, including modem science itself, from specific configurations of collective life. This argument, which posits the existence of a relationship of isomorphic dependence between the institutional forms and the logical categories of any given culture, implies that the enterprise of science is simply another object of analysis that, like any social fact, can be investigated with the tools of scientific method. But this, of course, renders even more problematic the sense in which science is autonomous from and hence authorized to pass critical judgment upon common sense's adequacy. For science, if it is to sustain its claim to the possession of non-relativistic criteria of truth, must explain how it has abstracted itself from and thereby come to stand outside the historical processes of which it is, and continues to be, the product; it must, in short, justify its claim to know the form of which it is the matter.49

To solve this dilemma, Durkheim suggests that truth is a function not of objectivity, as the Rules had affirmed, but rather of impersonality. The possibility of scientific knowledge, he argues, is predicated upon the existence of a community of inquirers whose joint commitment to the rules of scientific procedure enables its members to suppress the idio- syncratic effects otherwise produced by private perception and pre- judice and so arrive at concepts that are true not because they perfectly mirror their objects, but rather because they are held in common. A true concept, then, is one whose excision of specific points of view ensures that it can be shared by all who engage in formally identical practices of rule-governed observation and reasoning.

Given the thrust of Durkheim's sociology of knowledge, this displace- ment of objectivity by impersonality as the criterion of truth must imply that the modern world has itself developed the morphological preconditions that make this abstraction conceptually possible. The very possibility of scientific knowledge is rooted in the evolution of a kind of collective existence that has progressively dissociated itself from the more particularistic forms of social organization characteristic of cultures that, of necessity, proved incapable of science:

If logical thought tends to rid itself more and more of the subjective and per- sonal elements which it still retains from its origin, it is not because extra- social factors have intervened; it is much rather because a social life of a new sort is developing. It is this international life which has already resulted in universalizing religious beliefs.50

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Even though each specific society is itself an individual ego that, in virtue of "its own personal physiognomy and its idiosyncracies," imparts to its representations qualities that differ from those of other societies, gradual absorption of the particular within the universal will "progressively root(ed) out" these "subjective elements" and so enable all "to approach reality more closely."51

This reformulation of the defining criterion of scientific truth, which presupposes Durkheim's conviction that the enterprise of science has been "called into being" by contemporary society to furnish the "reflec- tive intelligence"52 required by its growing complexity, entails the pos- sible superfluity of social science itself. By grounding the criteria of truth in the abstraction of modernity's order, this analysis suggests that when a collectivity progresses to the point such that it proves able to generate the logical structures characteristic of scientific rationality, then the commitment of its members to value a given set of normative tenets, like those definitive of the cult of the individual, is a sufficient and final guarantee of its truth. That this conclusion has not wholly escaped Durkheim is indicated by his admission that

a collective representation presents guarantees of objectivity by the fact that it is collective; for it is not without sufficient reason that it has been able to generalize and maintain itself with persistence. If it were out of accord with the nature of things, it would never have been able to acquire an extended and prolonged empire over intellects ... (A) collective representation is necessarily submitted to a control that is repeated indefinitely; the men who accept it verify it by their own experience.53

In a sense, then, Durkheim has solved too well the legitimation dilem- ma of the Rules. For if participation in forms of cosmopolitan associa- tion renders each agent "capable of raising himself above his own

peculiar point of view" and hence of "living an impersonal life," then it would appear that the collective consciousness already incorporates the "methodical control"54 that ensures its apprehension of and dedica- tion to a secular religion that "does not address itself to the particular being ... but to the human person wherever it is found and in whatever form it is embodied."55 Because "verification is a reciprocal process" in which "the experiences of all individuals are mutually critical,"56 it may be inferred that society has now acquired the capacity to discipline itself and hence no longer requires that of sociology.

The problematic implications of this inference are aggravated by Durk- heim's reconceptualization of the grounds of scientific authority. If it is

Even though each specific society is itself an individual ego that, in virtue of "its own personal physiognomy and its idiosyncracies," imparts to its representations qualities that differ from those of other societies, gradual absorption of the particular within the universal will "progressively root(ed) out" these "subjective elements" and so enable all "to approach reality more closely."51

This reformulation of the defining criterion of scientific truth, which presupposes Durkheim's conviction that the enterprise of science has been "called into being" by contemporary society to furnish the "reflec- tive intelligence"52 required by its growing complexity, entails the pos- sible superfluity of social science itself. By grounding the criteria of truth in the abstraction of modernity's order, this analysis suggests that when a collectivity progresses to the point such that it proves able to generate the logical structures characteristic of scientific rationality, then the commitment of its members to value a given set of normative tenets, like those definitive of the cult of the individual, is a sufficient and final guarantee of its truth. That this conclusion has not wholly escaped Durkheim is indicated by his admission that

a collective representation presents guarantees of objectivity by the fact that it is collective; for it is not without sufficient reason that it has been able to generalize and maintain itself with persistence. If it were out of accord with the nature of things, it would never have been able to acquire an extended and prolonged empire over intellects ... (A) collective representation is necessarily submitted to a control that is repeated indefinitely; the men who accept it verify it by their own experience.53

In a sense, then, Durkheim has solved too well the legitimation dilem- ma of the Rules. For if participation in forms of cosmopolitan associa- tion renders each agent "capable of raising himself above his own

peculiar point of view" and hence of "living an impersonal life," then it would appear that the collective consciousness already incorporates the "methodical control"54 that ensures its apprehension of and dedica- tion to a secular religion that "does not address itself to the particular being ... but to the human person wherever it is found and in whatever form it is embodied."55 Because "verification is a reciprocal process" in which "the experiences of all individuals are mutually critical,"56 it may be inferred that society has now acquired the capacity to discipline itself and hence no longer requires that of sociology.

The problematic implications of this inference are aggravated by Durk- heim's reconceptualization of the grounds of scientific authority. If it is

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true that the logical forms and truth criteria of science are relative to the specific culture out of which they have evolved and within which they are normatively maintained, then the authority of science derives not from its unique ability to penetrate the real but rather from its uni- versal acceptance by a collectivity; "that is as much as to say that it expresses a state of public opinion."57 And in this regard, science, understood as one possible fruit of the need to "connect things with each other, to establish internal relations between them, to classify them and to systematize them,... does not differ in nature from" religion; for if "a people did not have faith in science, all the scientific demonstra- tions in the world would be without any influence whatsoever."58

Together, these arguments regarding the nature of scientific truth intimate a vision of political life that subverts that Durkheim formally recommends. They suggest that the lawgiver, who was once conceived as the externalized and singular bearer of the theory conferring upon practice its rationality, may now be democratically reconstituted and embedded within a social practice that has itself become self-conscious in virtue of its assumption of responsibility for the production of its own truth and the projection of its own authority. They imply, in other words, that fulfillment of a modem citizenry's claim to autonomy requires that it freely exercise its collective will in the unmediated crea- tion of an order that, although not the fruit of an antecedently con- ceived design, is nonetheless intelligible; for its rationality is wholly self-contained within the truth that collective practice spawns.

This, however, is a possibility Durkheim cannot acknowledge if he is to continue to insist, first, that a "plan of action that we ourselves outline, which depends only upon ourselves and that we can always modify," cannot possess the constraint that is an essential property of any social fact; and, second, that when we elect to "adopt a given mode of life" on distinctively rational grounds, "it is to the authority of science ... that we defer, in our behavior, and not to ourselves."59 Committed to a dichotomous framework of debate stipulating that social life is either an artifact made by the conjunction of teleologically-oriented wills or a sui generis reality whose reified character is best articulated through a metaphorical assimilation of the consciousness of an individual subject to the processes of collective dynamics, Durkheim can only conceive of a politics of democratic self-creation as a prescription for anarchy whose subjectivism calls into question the "special competence" sociol- ogy claims for itself. To deny this threat, Durkheim must once again reconceptualize the nature of facts such that they prove able to enforce

true that the logical forms and truth criteria of science are relative to the specific culture out of which they have evolved and within which they are normatively maintained, then the authority of science derives not from its unique ability to penetrate the real but rather from its uni- versal acceptance by a collectivity; "that is as much as to say that it expresses a state of public opinion."57 And in this regard, science, understood as one possible fruit of the need to "connect things with each other, to establish internal relations between them, to classify them and to systematize them,... does not differ in nature from" religion; for if "a people did not have faith in science, all the scientific demonstra- tions in the world would be without any influence whatsoever."58

Together, these arguments regarding the nature of scientific truth intimate a vision of political life that subverts that Durkheim formally recommends. They suggest that the lawgiver, who was once conceived as the externalized and singular bearer of the theory conferring upon practice its rationality, may now be democratically reconstituted and embedded within a social practice that has itself become self-conscious in virtue of its assumption of responsibility for the production of its own truth and the projection of its own authority. They imply, in other words, that fulfillment of a modem citizenry's claim to autonomy requires that it freely exercise its collective will in the unmediated crea- tion of an order that, although not the fruit of an antecedently con- ceived design, is nonetheless intelligible; for its rationality is wholly self-contained within the truth that collective practice spawns.

This, however, is a possibility Durkheim cannot acknowledge if he is to continue to insist, first, that a "plan of action that we ourselves outline, which depends only upon ourselves and that we can always modify," cannot possess the constraint that is an essential property of any social fact; and, second, that when we elect to "adopt a given mode of life" on distinctively rational grounds, "it is to the authority of science ... that we defer, in our behavior, and not to ourselves."59 Committed to a dichotomous framework of debate stipulating that social life is either an artifact made by the conjunction of teleologically-oriented wills or a sui generis reality whose reified character is best articulated through a metaphorical assimilation of the consciousness of an individual subject to the processes of collective dynamics, Durkheim can only conceive of a politics of democratic self-creation as a prescription for anarchy whose subjectivism calls into question the "special competence" sociol- ogy claims for itself. To deny this threat, Durkheim must once again reconceptualize the nature of facts such that they prove able to enforce

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the claims of truth, even though their authority can no longer be sus- tained on positivist grounds. Or, to put this less charitably, the peculiar- ly modem self must become the bearer of a form of constraint whose legitimacy stems from its appearance as the self-legislated consequence of society's ever more self-conscious practice but whose power to oppose any misguided efforts to re-form that practice stems from its simultaneous appearance as an untouchable object. A science that first insisted its educational mission was distinguished by its refusal to "implant truth in minds and characters by recourse to methods beyond the scope of reason"60 must now deliberately mystify itself so as to invest its facts "with that mysterious property which creates a void about sacred things."61

The legislators' revolt

Durkheim's final articulation of the politics of truth appears in the lectures he delivers on American pragmatism in 1913-1914. In the work of William James and John Dewey, whose teachings threaten to "overthrow our whole national culture,"62 Durkheim finds a disturbing caricature of the implications latent in his own later work. Representing truth and reason as "human things that derive from temporal causes and give rise to temporal consequences,"63 pragmatism shares sociol- ogy's central impulse; but its misconstruction of this historicist premise reveals the epistemological and political disorder that results when the situation of truth's authority within society is joined to modernity's cult of the individual. Contending that "constructing truth and constructing reality are one and the same process,"64 pragmatism confirms Durk- heim's suspicion that if the legitimacy accorded to science by public opinion becomes the object of generalized skepticism, then the self- discipline that is vital to the non-coercive unity of modernity will no

longer obtain; celebrating a "universe" whose defining feature is its "plasticity,"65 this alien import makes clear that the autonomous sub- ject is unable to withstand the temptation to rehabilitate the myth of the legislator when an appreciation of the coercive character of social reality is lost.

Pragmatism's confusion of autonomy with radical subjectivism is dis- closed in an epistemology that invites a democratized lawgiver to colonize the realm of mind. Representing ideas as products of the isola- tion and recombination of the characteristics shared by a given cluster of objects or experiences, pragmatism urges that all ideational con-

the claims of truth, even though their authority can no longer be sus- tained on positivist grounds. Or, to put this less charitably, the peculiar- ly modem self must become the bearer of a form of constraint whose legitimacy stems from its appearance as the self-legislated consequence of society's ever more self-conscious practice but whose power to oppose any misguided efforts to re-form that practice stems from its simultaneous appearance as an untouchable object. A science that first insisted its educational mission was distinguished by its refusal to "implant truth in minds and characters by recourse to methods beyond the scope of reason"60 must now deliberately mystify itself so as to invest its facts "with that mysterious property which creates a void about sacred things."61

The legislators' revolt

Durkheim's final articulation of the politics of truth appears in the lectures he delivers on American pragmatism in 1913-1914. In the work of William James and John Dewey, whose teachings threaten to "overthrow our whole national culture,"62 Durkheim finds a disturbing caricature of the implications latent in his own later work. Representing truth and reason as "human things that derive from temporal causes and give rise to temporal consequences,"63 pragmatism shares sociol- ogy's central impulse; but its misconstruction of this historicist premise reveals the epistemological and political disorder that results when the situation of truth's authority within society is joined to modernity's cult of the individual. Contending that "constructing truth and constructing reality are one and the same process,"64 pragmatism confirms Durk- heim's suspicion that if the legitimacy accorded to science by public opinion becomes the object of generalized skepticism, then the self- discipline that is vital to the non-coercive unity of modernity will no

longer obtain; celebrating a "universe" whose defining feature is its "plasticity,"65 this alien import makes clear that the autonomous sub- ject is unable to withstand the temptation to rehabilitate the myth of the legislator when an appreciation of the coercive character of social reality is lost.

Pragmatism's confusion of autonomy with radical subjectivism is dis- closed in an epistemology that invites a democratized lawgiver to colonize the realm of mind. Representing ideas as products of the isola- tion and recombination of the characteristics shared by a given cluster of objects or experiences, pragmatism urges that all ideational con-

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structs be evaluated through reference to their capacity to facilitate individuals' intercourse with the affairs of everyday life. But this form of "logical utilitarianism," which holds that "thought has as its aim not the reproduction of a datum, but the construction of a future reality," must prove incoherent because it conceives of "truth as the product of the gradual convergence of individual judgments."66 "Pragmatists have had great difficulty in solving the problem of knowing how several dif- ferent minds can know the same world at once"67 because they cannot explain how communities are able to generate concepts that are other than indistinct "generic images," i.e., images that merely delineate the "particular simplified and impoverished"68 and that alter their identity as soon as those particulars take on a different shape. Its most funda- mental presuppositions thereby ensure its incapacity to offset the cen- trifugal force produced by a division of labor whose differentiation of occupational experience entails that "each mind" is ever more "oriented to a different point on the horizon, reflecting a different aspect of the world."69 Committed to a vision of society that is "ceaselessly formed, de-formed, and transformed" because it is "(m)ade up of a plurality of small systems, each of which is endowed with an autonomous life,"70 pragmatism cannot account for the unification of individuals who now share "nothing in common amongst themselves except... the constitu- tive attributes of the human person in general."71

To bind together and discipline the adherents of a cult that honors a self without determinate content, Durkheim turns neither to the social fact nor to the collective representation but to the concept. In contrast to pragmatism's "generic images," concepts are "universal or at least capable of being universal amongst... all men who have the same lan- guage;" and they are fixed inasmuch as "thinking in concepts means thinking of the variable, but subsuming it under the form of the immut- able."72 These properties, in turn, reflect their status as elaborations of "a unique intelligence" that, because it "bear(s) the mark of no particu- lar mind,"73 has "its own nature distinct from that of the individual."74 Concepts, as Durkheim explains in Elementary Forms, "correspond to the way in which this very special being, society, considers the things of its own proper experience":75

(T)he collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic life, since it is the consciousness of the consciousness. Being placed outside and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes into communicable ideas. At the same time that it sees from above, its sees farther; at every moment of time, it embraces all known reality.76

structs be evaluated through reference to their capacity to facilitate individuals' intercourse with the affairs of everyday life. But this form of "logical utilitarianism," which holds that "thought has as its aim not the reproduction of a datum, but the construction of a future reality," must prove incoherent because it conceives of "truth as the product of the gradual convergence of individual judgments."66 "Pragmatists have had great difficulty in solving the problem of knowing how several dif- ferent minds can know the same world at once"67 because they cannot explain how communities are able to generate concepts that are other than indistinct "generic images," i.e., images that merely delineate the "particular simplified and impoverished"68 and that alter their identity as soon as those particulars take on a different shape. Its most funda- mental presuppositions thereby ensure its incapacity to offset the cen- trifugal force produced by a division of labor whose differentiation of occupational experience entails that "each mind" is ever more "oriented to a different point on the horizon, reflecting a different aspect of the world."69 Committed to a vision of society that is "ceaselessly formed, de-formed, and transformed" because it is "(m)ade up of a plurality of small systems, each of which is endowed with an autonomous life,"70 pragmatism cannot account for the unification of individuals who now share "nothing in common amongst themselves except... the constitu- tive attributes of the human person in general."71

To bind together and discipline the adherents of a cult that honors a self without determinate content, Durkheim turns neither to the social fact nor to the collective representation but to the concept. In contrast to pragmatism's "generic images," concepts are "universal or at least capable of being universal amongst... all men who have the same lan- guage;" and they are fixed inasmuch as "thinking in concepts means thinking of the variable, but subsuming it under the form of the immut- able."72 These properties, in turn, reflect their status as elaborations of "a unique intelligence" that, because it "bear(s) the mark of no particu- lar mind,"73 has "its own nature distinct from that of the individual."74 Concepts, as Durkheim explains in Elementary Forms, "correspond to the way in which this very special being, society, considers the things of its own proper experience":75

(T)he collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic life, since it is the consciousness of the consciousness. Being placed outside and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes into communicable ideas. At the same time that it sees from above, its sees farther; at every moment of time, it embraces all known reality.76

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Thus, like the social fact, the concept possesses the objectivity that enables it to resist the will; but, like the collective representation, it exercises this power through its penetration of the individual psyche. It thereby evades the deficiency of the former, which presented itself as mere reified coercion, as well as that of the latter, which collapsed into mere intersubjective praxis.

The exact character of this final formulation of the subject/subject- matter relation becomes clear when Durkheim's arguments in Elemen- tary Forms and Pragmatism and Sociology are informed by a reading of his 1914 essay titled "The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Conditions." There, it becomes clear why neither the ostracism of the legislator, nor the cosmopolitanism of modernity, is sufficient to thwart the disruptive power of contingent particularity and so secure the unvarnished rule of science over practice. Offering a sociological re- interpretation of the Cartesian dualism of mind and body, Durkheim asserts that human nature is composed of two independent parts. The first, corresponding to the sacred, is constituted by the conceptual and moral reality that society bequeaths to the individual. The second, cor- responding to the profane, is constituted by the pre-social body whose impulses, rooted in organismic drives, are defined by their passionate and egoistic nature. The latter, which ensures the existence of "separate personalities" by "break(ing) up and differentiat(ing)" the former, thwarts realization of the regime of truth because it entails the inevit- able production of discrepant points of view:

It is the body that fulfills this function. As bodies are distinct from each other, and as they occupy different points of space and time, each of them forms a special centre about which the collective representations reflect and color themselves differently. The result is that even if all the consciousness in these bodies are directed towards the same world, to wit, the world of ideas and sentiments which brings about the moral unity of the group, they do not all see it from the same angle; each one expresses it in its own fashion.77

As Durkheim's metaphor for all that draws the individual away from unity and into a sphere of privacy, it is the body that guarantees con- cepts will be "retouched, modified, and consequently falsified"78 as a consequence of the internalization that renders them something other than heteronomous agencies of coercion. No matter how willing, the subjects of a scientifically-grounded political education, in appropri- ating society's concepts for purposes of everyday use, cannot help but "give words a particular meaning which they do not have"79 and so "pervert"80 its core curriculum.

Thus, like the social fact, the concept possesses the objectivity that enables it to resist the will; but, like the collective representation, it exercises this power through its penetration of the individual psyche. It thereby evades the deficiency of the former, which presented itself as mere reified coercion, as well as that of the latter, which collapsed into mere intersubjective praxis.

The exact character of this final formulation of the subject/subject- matter relation becomes clear when Durkheim's arguments in Elemen- tary Forms and Pragmatism and Sociology are informed by a reading of his 1914 essay titled "The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Conditions." There, it becomes clear why neither the ostracism of the legislator, nor the cosmopolitanism of modernity, is sufficient to thwart the disruptive power of contingent particularity and so secure the unvarnished rule of science over practice. Offering a sociological re- interpretation of the Cartesian dualism of mind and body, Durkheim asserts that human nature is composed of two independent parts. The first, corresponding to the sacred, is constituted by the conceptual and moral reality that society bequeaths to the individual. The second, cor- responding to the profane, is constituted by the pre-social body whose impulses, rooted in organismic drives, are defined by their passionate and egoistic nature. The latter, which ensures the existence of "separate personalities" by "break(ing) up and differentiat(ing)" the former, thwarts realization of the regime of truth because it entails the inevit- able production of discrepant points of view:

It is the body that fulfills this function. As bodies are distinct from each other, and as they occupy different points of space and time, each of them forms a special centre about which the collective representations reflect and color themselves differently. The result is that even if all the consciousness in these bodies are directed towards the same world, to wit, the world of ideas and sentiments which brings about the moral unity of the group, they do not all see it from the same angle; each one expresses it in its own fashion.77

As Durkheim's metaphor for all that draws the individual away from unity and into a sphere of privacy, it is the body that guarantees con- cepts will be "retouched, modified, and consequently falsified"78 as a consequence of the internalization that renders them something other than heteronomous agencies of coercion. No matter how willing, the subjects of a scientifically-grounded political education, in appropri- ating society's concepts for purposes of everyday use, cannot help but "give words a particular meaning which they do not have"79 and so "pervert"80 its core curriculum.

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For this reason, Durkheim can no longer contend that it is the division of labor that fragments the realm of public intelligibility and hence that political education is sufficient to keep disorder at bay. As the residual element that determination by the concept can neither conquer nor absorb, the subjectivity that distinguishes each personality, like the legislator's will, is opaque to the ministrations of reason. Therefore, if collective life is to overcome the decentralizing dynamic set in motion by persistence of the material self, it must assume a coercive character: "(T)o make it conform, we have to do some violence to it," even though '"we" shall "never completely succeed in triumphing over its resis- tance."81 The unattainable goal of modernity's politics, in short, is the inscription of homogeneous concepts upon souls whose recalcitrant bodies necessarily undermine the presumption that "reality" is "the same for all."82

Consummating the logic inaugurated by Montesquieu when he sheared off the peculiarities of discrete societies in order to construct scientific types, Durkheim's transformation of society into a self-reflective sub- ject whose abstract consciousness confronts its bearers as an unmade object frustrates the will's desire to express its autonomy by either remaking or reinterpreting that reality. If it is true, as Durkheim had claimed as early as 1893, that "the closer the collective consciousness is to particular things,... the more unintelligible it is,"83 then individual participation in the generation of meaning can never contribute any- thing of value to the elaboration of shared understandings. Contra pragmatism, science's facts must present themselves to the subject not as clues that invite inquiry into the collective practice they disclose, but as clear and distinct givers that pit their "de facto necessitating power"84 against the "revolutionary fancies"85 of any who dare to challenge them. Because "the best part of us is only an emanation of the collectivity,"86 the self most perfectly "takes on the shape of the things it thinks about"87 when it functions as a docile receptor of content that it can "never manage to see in its entirety, or in its reality."88

It follows that liberalism's "tolerance" for the divergent opinions that emerge when each is encouraged "to judge freely the notions which society itself has elaborated"89 must be regarded by Durkheim as a necessary expression of the cult of the individual and, simultaneously, as a principle whose translation into practice by the capricious ego aggravates the breakdown of established standards that science is intended to remedy. To deny the latter while preserving an apparent commitment to the former, Durkheim backs off the demanding con-

For this reason, Durkheim can no longer contend that it is the division of labor that fragments the realm of public intelligibility and hence that political education is sufficient to keep disorder at bay. As the residual element that determination by the concept can neither conquer nor absorb, the subjectivity that distinguishes each personality, like the legislator's will, is opaque to the ministrations of reason. Therefore, if collective life is to overcome the decentralizing dynamic set in motion by persistence of the material self, it must assume a coercive character: "(T)o make it conform, we have to do some violence to it," even though '"we" shall "never completely succeed in triumphing over its resis- tance."81 The unattainable goal of modernity's politics, in short, is the inscription of homogeneous concepts upon souls whose recalcitrant bodies necessarily undermine the presumption that "reality" is "the same for all."82

Consummating the logic inaugurated by Montesquieu when he sheared off the peculiarities of discrete societies in order to construct scientific types, Durkheim's transformation of society into a self-reflective sub- ject whose abstract consciousness confronts its bearers as an unmade object frustrates the will's desire to express its autonomy by either remaking or reinterpreting that reality. If it is true, as Durkheim had claimed as early as 1893, that "the closer the collective consciousness is to particular things,... the more unintelligible it is,"83 then individual participation in the generation of meaning can never contribute any- thing of value to the elaboration of shared understandings. Contra pragmatism, science's facts must present themselves to the subject not as clues that invite inquiry into the collective practice they disclose, but as clear and distinct givers that pit their "de facto necessitating power"84 against the "revolutionary fancies"85 of any who dare to challenge them. Because "the best part of us is only an emanation of the collectivity,"86 the self most perfectly "takes on the shape of the things it thinks about"87 when it functions as a docile receptor of content that it can "never manage to see in its entirety, or in its reality."88

It follows that liberalism's "tolerance" for the divergent opinions that emerge when each is encouraged "to judge freely the notions which society itself has elaborated"89 must be regarded by Durkheim as a necessary expression of the cult of the individual and, simultaneously, as a principle whose translation into practice by the capricious ego aggravates the breakdown of established standards that science is intended to remedy. To deny the latter while preserving an apparent commitment to the former, Durkheim backs off the demanding con-

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ception of autonomy that informed the lectures on moral education and retreats to an epistemological variant of The Division of Labor's contention that the legitimate claims of modernity's self are satisfied if each has the opportunity to select a particular occupation. Because "every object of knowledge offers an opportunity for an infinity of pos- sible points of view," each mind must be granted the freedom to choose the perspective "from which it feels itself most competent to view

things."90 But this retention of a place "for individual diversity" is pos- sible only because such pluralism signifies not the conflict between

incompatible perspectives but, more benignly, the methodical accumu- lation of "partial truths" that must in time "come together in the collec- tive consciousness," in which they "find their limits and their necessary complements."91 Viewing citizens as minor partners within an enlarged scientific community, Durkheim can rest assured that reason, like the

public opinion that sustains it, will in time prove "capable of silencing the differences between ... points of view";92 it leaves room for dia-

logue only within that ever diminishing realm that has not yet been known "by science with such rigor that any sort of doubt is excluded."93

The fact of myth

At the close of his career, Durkheim is caught between a desire to

acknowledge fully the conception of social science to which his later research has brought him and a fear that this conception's abandon- ment of a positivist foundation leaves it with insufficient authority to rule the vicissitudes of public opinion.94 Unable to resolve this dilemma in a conclusive fashion, Durkheim, in the closing lectures on prag- matism, returns to the theme, first broached in the final paragraph of the Rules, regarding the measures necessary to secure the legitimacy of science. Splitting the difference between these competing impulses, Durkheim argues that universal acquiescence to truth can be guaran- teed only through deliberate fabrication of a "popular philosophy"95 that induces modernity's selves to embrace an epistemology that he himself can no longer defend.

How can "the collective consciousness..., even if not necessarily by means of a philosophical approach, take possession of scientific truths and fashion them into a coordinated whole?"96 Comte did not have to

grapple with this question because he "believed that once mankind reached the positive age," there would be no need for anyone to retain "views on questions not elucidated by science."97 Durkheim, however,

ception of autonomy that informed the lectures on moral education and retreats to an epistemological variant of The Division of Labor's contention that the legitimate claims of modernity's self are satisfied if each has the opportunity to select a particular occupation. Because "every object of knowledge offers an opportunity for an infinity of pos- sible points of view," each mind must be granted the freedom to choose the perspective "from which it feels itself most competent to view

things."90 But this retention of a place "for individual diversity" is pos- sible only because such pluralism signifies not the conflict between

incompatible perspectives but, more benignly, the methodical accumu- lation of "partial truths" that must in time "come together in the collec- tive consciousness," in which they "find their limits and their necessary complements."91 Viewing citizens as minor partners within an enlarged scientific community, Durkheim can rest assured that reason, like the

public opinion that sustains it, will in time prove "capable of silencing the differences between ... points of view";92 it leaves room for dia-

logue only within that ever diminishing realm that has not yet been known "by science with such rigor that any sort of doubt is excluded."93

The fact of myth

At the close of his career, Durkheim is caught between a desire to

acknowledge fully the conception of social science to which his later research has brought him and a fear that this conception's abandon- ment of a positivist foundation leaves it with insufficient authority to rule the vicissitudes of public opinion.94 Unable to resolve this dilemma in a conclusive fashion, Durkheim, in the closing lectures on prag- matism, returns to the theme, first broached in the final paragraph of the Rules, regarding the measures necessary to secure the legitimacy of science. Splitting the difference between these competing impulses, Durkheim argues that universal acquiescence to truth can be guaran- teed only through deliberate fabrication of a "popular philosophy"95 that induces modernity's selves to embrace an epistemology that he himself can no longer defend.

How can "the collective consciousness..., even if not necessarily by means of a philosophical approach, take possession of scientific truths and fashion them into a coordinated whole?"96 Comte did not have to

grapple with this question because he "believed that once mankind reached the positive age," there would be no need for anyone to retain "views on questions not elucidated by science."97 Durkheim, however,

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cannot embrace this article of faith because his encounter with prag- matism has thrown into doubt the adequacy of any philosophy of his- tory that culminates in the achievement of universal enlightenment. Ac- cordingly, Durkheim abandons the positivist distinction between science and ideology, i.e., between knowledge and opinion, and replaces it with that between science and "mythology," each of which he now acknowledges as a legitimate form of knowledge. The former, which is generated within a community whose professional code of ethics affirms the value of critical inquiry, unites its members in rational apprehension of "one object which is the same for all."98 The latter, whose power secures its acceptance "without ... verification,"99 sustains the disciplined maintenance of conceptual uniformity within the non-scientific public. Insisting that "there is, and there always will be, room in social life for a form of truth which will perhaps be ex- pressed in a secular way, but will nevertheless have a mythological and religious basis," Durkheim advocates the propagation of a functional creed that is "true" but only in the sense that it answers society's need for some source of "certainty," i.e., for conviction guaranteeing that there will be no hesitation "when the time comes ... to transform" its imperatives "into action."'00

Because certainty "is a disposition to act in conformity with a represen- tation," its achievement requires that citizens remain convinced that their constitutive concepts truly "conform to reality."'10 Because "what is important to know is what has made men believe that... representa- tion(s)"102 do so correspond, science must foster a positivist under- standing of its own constructs, one that effectively denies to its larger audience any awareness of the unsettling implications latent within the shift from objectivity to impersonality as the ground of truth. Thus, the persistence of myth, i.e., of beliefs that "are false with respect to things, but true with respect to the subjects who think them," is not "one of the great obstacles which obstruct the development of sociology."'03 Pro- motion of an ontology that situates all meaning in a distanced zone that a "people is forbidden to touch"104 is an essential condition of truth's authority and so of its very existence.

"(T)he old gods are growing old or already dead, and others are not yet born."'05 Durkheim responds to liberal society's absence of a shared ethical vocabulary and hence its "disintegrat(ion) into an inconclusive host of fragmented, petty creatures in conflict with one another"'06 with the assertion of a form of discourse whose facticity aims to fix the referents of essential concepts and so overcome the semantic ambiguity

cannot embrace this article of faith because his encounter with prag- matism has thrown into doubt the adequacy of any philosophy of his- tory that culminates in the achievement of universal enlightenment. Ac- cordingly, Durkheim abandons the positivist distinction between science and ideology, i.e., between knowledge and opinion, and replaces it with that between science and "mythology," each of which he now acknowledges as a legitimate form of knowledge. The former, which is generated within a community whose professional code of ethics affirms the value of critical inquiry, unites its members in rational apprehension of "one object which is the same for all."98 The latter, whose power secures its acceptance "without ... verification,"99 sustains the disciplined maintenance of conceptual uniformity within the non-scientific public. Insisting that "there is, and there always will be, room in social life for a form of truth which will perhaps be ex- pressed in a secular way, but will nevertheless have a mythological and religious basis," Durkheim advocates the propagation of a functional creed that is "true" but only in the sense that it answers society's need for some source of "certainty," i.e., for conviction guaranteeing that there will be no hesitation "when the time comes ... to transform" its imperatives "into action."'00

Because certainty "is a disposition to act in conformity with a represen- tation," its achievement requires that citizens remain convinced that their constitutive concepts truly "conform to reality."'10 Because "what is important to know is what has made men believe that... representa- tion(s)"102 do so correspond, science must foster a positivist under- standing of its own constructs, one that effectively denies to its larger audience any awareness of the unsettling implications latent within the shift from objectivity to impersonality as the ground of truth. Thus, the persistence of myth, i.e., of beliefs that "are false with respect to things, but true with respect to the subjects who think them," is not "one of the great obstacles which obstruct the development of sociology."'03 Pro- motion of an ontology that situates all meaning in a distanced zone that a "people is forbidden to touch"104 is an essential condition of truth's authority and so of its very existence.

"(T)he old gods are growing old or already dead, and others are not yet born."'05 Durkheim responds to liberal society's absence of a shared ethical vocabulary and hence its "disintegrat(ion) into an inconclusive host of fragmented, petty creatures in conflict with one another"'06 with the assertion of a form of discourse whose facticity aims to fix the referents of essential concepts and so overcome the semantic ambiguity

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that pragmatism cultivates. Inculcating a cult whose universal endorse- ment creates the illusion of an order united not by the coercive necessi- ties of hierarchically organized domination but by a common frame- work of value, the science of society restores a simulacrum of com- munity to a world drained of its concrete conditions.

Notes

1. Because so much of the secondary literature on Durkheim fails to blur the distinc- tions among his scientific, political, and educational writings, there is little work on his understanding of political education, i.e., the question of how the facts derived from scientific investigation into the structure of modern society are to become possessions of a democratic citizenry. For essays that offer conventional readings of Durkheim's educational work, i.e., readings that are insensitive to its political dimensions, see Paul Fauconnet's "Introduction" to Emile Durkheim: Education and Sociology, (New York: Free Press, 1956); and A. K. C. Ottaway, "The Educational Sociology of Emile Durkheim," British Journal of Sociology, 6, (1955): 213-227. For one of the few essays that recognizes the centrality of this problem within Durkheim's corpus, see Stephen Marks, "Durkheim's Theory of Anomie," American Journal of Sociology, 80, (1974): 329-363. Finally, for a useful historical assessment of Durkheim's role in transforming the practices of the French university system, see Terry Clark, "Emile Durkheim and the Institu- tionalization of Sociology in the French University System," European Journal of Sociology, 9, (1968): 37-71.

2. Emile Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 11.

3. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, (New York: Free Press, 1965), 41-42.

4. Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau, 12. 5. Ibid., 12. Cf. Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, (New York:

Free Press, 1982), 82: "An observation is more objective the more stable the object is to which it relates. This is because the condition for any objectivity is the existence of a constant, fixed vantage point to which the representation may be related and which allows all that is variable and hence subjective, to be elimi- nated."

6. Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau, 4. 7. Ibid., 6, 8. 8. Ibid., 13. 9. Ibid., 11.

10. Ibid., 40. 11. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, (New York: Free Press, 1984),

121, 105. 12. Ibid., 73, 75. 13. Ibid., 122. 14. Ibid., 122. Durkheim's equation of individual autonomy with the right to select a

specialized occupational sphere is suggested by the following passage in The Divi- sion of Labor: "Indeed to be a person means to be an autonomous source of

that pragmatism cultivates. Inculcating a cult whose universal endorse- ment creates the illusion of an order united not by the coercive necessi- ties of hierarchically organized domination but by a common frame- work of value, the science of society restores a simulacrum of com- munity to a world drained of its concrete conditions.

Notes

1. Because so much of the secondary literature on Durkheim fails to blur the distinc- tions among his scientific, political, and educational writings, there is little work on his understanding of political education, i.e., the question of how the facts derived from scientific investigation into the structure of modern society are to become possessions of a democratic citizenry. For essays that offer conventional readings of Durkheim's educational work, i.e., readings that are insensitive to its political dimensions, see Paul Fauconnet's "Introduction" to Emile Durkheim: Education and Sociology, (New York: Free Press, 1956); and A. K. C. Ottaway, "The Educational Sociology of Emile Durkheim," British Journal of Sociology, 6, (1955): 213-227. For one of the few essays that recognizes the centrality of this problem within Durkheim's corpus, see Stephen Marks, "Durkheim's Theory of Anomie," American Journal of Sociology, 80, (1974): 329-363. Finally, for a useful historical assessment of Durkheim's role in transforming the practices of the French university system, see Terry Clark, "Emile Durkheim and the Institu- tionalization of Sociology in the French University System," European Journal of Sociology, 9, (1968): 37-71.

2. Emile Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 11.

3. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, (New York: Free Press, 1965), 41-42.

4. Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau, 12. 5. Ibid., 12. Cf. Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, (New York:

Free Press, 1982), 82: "An observation is more objective the more stable the object is to which it relates. This is because the condition for any objectivity is the existence of a constant, fixed vantage point to which the representation may be related and which allows all that is variable and hence subjective, to be elimi- nated."

6. Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau, 4. 7. Ibid., 6, 8. 8. Ibid., 13. 9. Ibid., 11.

10. Ibid., 40. 11. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, (New York: Free Press, 1984),

121, 105. 12. Ibid., 73, 75. 13. Ibid., 122. 14. Ibid., 122. Durkheim's equation of individual autonomy with the right to select a

specialized occupational sphere is suggested by the following passage in The Divi- sion of Labor: "Indeed to be a person means to be an autonomous source of

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action. Thus man only attains this state to the degree that there is something within him that is his and his alone, that makes him an individual, whereby he is more than the mere embodiment of the generic type of his race and group.... The disappearance of the segmentary type of society, at the same time as it necessitates greater specialization, frees the individual consciousness in part from the organic environment that supports it, as it does from the social environment that envelops it. This dual emancipation renders the individual more independent in his own behavior. The division of labor itself contributes to this liberating effect" (335).

15. Ibid., 337. 16. Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau, 3, 12. 17. Durkheim, Rules, 142. 18. Ibid., 143, 46. 19. Ibid., 60, 62. 20. Ibid., 70. 21. Ibid., 76. 22. Emile Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy, (New York: Free Press, 1974), 65. 23. Emile Durkheim, "Note on the definition of socialism" [1893], in Anthony

Giddens, editor, Durkheim on Politics and the State, (Stanford: Stanford Univer- sity Press, 1986), 115.

24. Durkheim, Rules, 160. 25. Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy, 73. 26. Durkheim, Rules, 73. 27. Ibid., 51-53. 28. Ibid., 70. Cf. Durkheim, Rules, 128: "The authority to which the individual bows

when he acts, thinks or feels socially dominates him to such a degree because it is a product of forces which transcend him and for which he consequently cannot account. It is not from within himself that can come the external pressure which he undergoes; it is therefore not what is happening within himself which can explain it."

29. That Durkheim is made uneasy by the political implications present in the Rules' conception of social facts is suggested by the "Preface," which he adds to this work's second edition in 1901. There, in response to his critics, he 1) modifies his claim about the objectivity of social facts by arguing that their "thing-like" quality describes not their ontological status as material entities, but rather their method- ological status as phenomena that are "not naturally penetrable by the under- standing" (36); 2) qualifies his insistence upon the externality of social facts by asserting that, although incapable of being reduced to "purely psychological fac- tors," they are nonetheless internal because they "express ... the way in which the group thinks of itself in its relationships with the objects which affect it" (40); and 3) downplays his emphasis upon the coerciveness of social facts by declaring that the property of constraint, rather than delineating its essential attribute, merely describes one possible feature with which to "pick out their location" (43). Per- haps most importantly, he tempers the antagonistic relationship between individ- uals and social facts by affirming that the authority that the latter bears induces subjects not merely to submit, but to submit with an attitude of respect and even devotion.

30. Ibid., 163. 31. The need to sustain these appearances is suggested by the discrepancy between

Durkheim's formal methodological protestations and the actual conduct of his inquiry. In the main text of the Rules, Durkheim insists that science's elimination

141

action. Thus man only attains this state to the degree that there is something within him that is his and his alone, that makes him an individual, whereby he is more than the mere embodiment of the generic type of his race and group.... The disappearance of the segmentary type of society, at the same time as it necessitates greater specialization, frees the individual consciousness in part from the organic environment that supports it, as it does from the social environment that envelops it. This dual emancipation renders the individual more independent in his own behavior. The division of labor itself contributes to this liberating effect" (335).

15. Ibid., 337. 16. Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau, 3, 12. 17. Durkheim, Rules, 142. 18. Ibid., 143, 46. 19. Ibid., 60, 62. 20. Ibid., 70. 21. Ibid., 76. 22. Emile Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy, (New York: Free Press, 1974), 65. 23. Emile Durkheim, "Note on the definition of socialism" [1893], in Anthony

Giddens, editor, Durkheim on Politics and the State, (Stanford: Stanford Univer- sity Press, 1986), 115.

24. Durkheim, Rules, 160. 25. Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy, 73. 26. Durkheim, Rules, 73. 27. Ibid., 51-53. 28. Ibid., 70. Cf. Durkheim, Rules, 128: "The authority to which the individual bows

when he acts, thinks or feels socially dominates him to such a degree because it is a product of forces which transcend him and for which he consequently cannot account. It is not from within himself that can come the external pressure which he undergoes; it is therefore not what is happening within himself which can explain it."

29. That Durkheim is made uneasy by the political implications present in the Rules' conception of social facts is suggested by the "Preface," which he adds to this work's second edition in 1901. There, in response to his critics, he 1) modifies his claim about the objectivity of social facts by arguing that their "thing-like" quality describes not their ontological status as material entities, but rather their method- ological status as phenomena that are "not naturally penetrable by the under- standing" (36); 2) qualifies his insistence upon the externality of social facts by asserting that, although incapable of being reduced to "purely psychological fac- tors," they are nonetheless internal because they "express ... the way in which the group thinks of itself in its relationships with the objects which affect it" (40); and 3) downplays his emphasis upon the coerciveness of social facts by declaring that the property of constraint, rather than delineating its essential attribute, merely describes one possible feature with which to "pick out their location" (43). Per- haps most importantly, he tempers the antagonistic relationship between individ- uals and social facts by affirming that the authority that the latter bears induces subjects not merely to submit, but to submit with an attitude of respect and even devotion.

30. Ibid., 163. 31. The need to sustain these appearances is suggested by the discrepancy between

Durkheim's formal methodological protestations and the actual conduct of his inquiry. In the main text of the Rules, Durkheim insists that science's elimination

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of any reliance upon commonsense preconceptions enables it to know social facts as they really are, i.e., independent of any prior representation. However, in a footnote that explicates the procedure he actually employs when investigating substantive issues, he grants that "it is always the common concept and the com- mon term which are the point of departure" (84, # 12). This alternative formula- tion suggests that the aim of science is not to abolish common sense but to refine its understandings. The significance of this admission will become apparent below.

32. Emile Durkheim, Moral Education, (New York: Free Press, 1961), 37. 33. Ibid., 38. 34. For an essay that concludes that Durkheim's political thought culminates in a

quasi-Hegelian justification of a technocratic state, see Pierre Birbaum, "La con- ception durkheimienne de l'6tat: l'apolitisme des fonctionnaires," Revue franfaise de sociologie, 17 (1976): 247-258. Also, in my essay titled "Emile Durkheim and the Science of Corporatism," Political Theory, 14 (1986): 638-659, I have argued that Durkheim's commitment to a rehabilitation of the occupational asso- ciation is best understood as an attempt to secure universal acquiescence to the authority of a technocratic state by vitiating conceptions of democratic politics that stimulate challenges to it. For other recent efforts to clarify Durkheim's con- ception of the relation between state and society, see Jeffrey Prager, "Moral In- tegration and Political Inclusion: A Comparison of Durkheim's and Weber's Theories of Democracy," Social Forces, 59 (1981): 918-950; and Frank Hearn, "Durkheim's Political Sociology: Corporatism, State Autonomy, and Democracy, Social Research, 52 (1985): 151-177.

35. The shift in Durkheim's view of what he calls the cult of man is also anticipated in Suicide, (New York: Free Press, 1951), published one year before this essay. See especially 336-337: "As societies become greater in volume and density, they increase in complexity, work is divided, individual differences multiply, and the moment approaches when the only remaining bond among the members of a single human group will be that they are all men. Under such conditions the body of collective sentiments inevitably attaches itself with all its strength to its single remaining object .... This cult of man is something... very different from the egoistic individualism above referred to, which leads to suicide. Far from detach- ing individuals from society and from every aim beyond themselves, it unites them in one thought, makes them servants of one work."

36. Durkheim, Division of Labor, 122. 37. Emile Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, (Westport, Ct: Green-

wood Press, 1983), 69. 38. Emile Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals," in Robert Bellah, editor,

Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 50. Cf. Giddens, editor, Durkheim on Politics and the State, 178: "Yet, in spite of all disputes, nowadays there exists, at the very foundation of our civilization, a certain number of principles which, implicitly or explicitly, are common to every- body and which very few people in any case dare to deny openly and outrightly: the respect for reason and science, the ideas and sentiments which are at the basis of the democratic ethic."

39. Ibid., 49. 40. Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy, 74. 41. Durkheim, Moral Education, 107-108. For an essay that shows unusual sensi-

tivity to the influence of neo-Kantian moral philosophy upon Durkheim, see

142

of any reliance upon commonsense preconceptions enables it to know social facts as they really are, i.e., independent of any prior representation. However, in a footnote that explicates the procedure he actually employs when investigating substantive issues, he grants that "it is always the common concept and the com- mon term which are the point of departure" (84, # 12). This alternative formula- tion suggests that the aim of science is not to abolish common sense but to refine its understandings. The significance of this admission will become apparent below.

32. Emile Durkheim, Moral Education, (New York: Free Press, 1961), 37. 33. Ibid., 38. 34. For an essay that concludes that Durkheim's political thought culminates in a

quasi-Hegelian justification of a technocratic state, see Pierre Birbaum, "La con- ception durkheimienne de l'6tat: l'apolitisme des fonctionnaires," Revue franfaise de sociologie, 17 (1976): 247-258. Also, in my essay titled "Emile Durkheim and the Science of Corporatism," Political Theory, 14 (1986): 638-659, I have argued that Durkheim's commitment to a rehabilitation of the occupational asso- ciation is best understood as an attempt to secure universal acquiescence to the authority of a technocratic state by vitiating conceptions of democratic politics that stimulate challenges to it. For other recent efforts to clarify Durkheim's con- ception of the relation between state and society, see Jeffrey Prager, "Moral In- tegration and Political Inclusion: A Comparison of Durkheim's and Weber's Theories of Democracy," Social Forces, 59 (1981): 918-950; and Frank Hearn, "Durkheim's Political Sociology: Corporatism, State Autonomy, and Democracy, Social Research, 52 (1985): 151-177.

35. The shift in Durkheim's view of what he calls the cult of man is also anticipated in Suicide, (New York: Free Press, 1951), published one year before this essay. See especially 336-337: "As societies become greater in volume and density, they increase in complexity, work is divided, individual differences multiply, and the moment approaches when the only remaining bond among the members of a single human group will be that they are all men. Under such conditions the body of collective sentiments inevitably attaches itself with all its strength to its single remaining object .... This cult of man is something... very different from the egoistic individualism above referred to, which leads to suicide. Far from detach- ing individuals from society and from every aim beyond themselves, it unites them in one thought, makes them servants of one work."

36. Durkheim, Division of Labor, 122. 37. Emile Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, (Westport, Ct: Green-

wood Press, 1983), 69. 38. Emile Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals," in Robert Bellah, editor,

Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 50. Cf. Giddens, editor, Durkheim on Politics and the State, 178: "Yet, in spite of all disputes, nowadays there exists, at the very foundation of our civilization, a certain number of principles which, implicitly or explicitly, are common to every- body and which very few people in any case dare to deny openly and outrightly: the respect for reason and science, the ideas and sentiments which are at the basis of the democratic ethic."

39. Ibid., 49. 40. Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy, 74. 41. Durkheim, Moral Education, 107-108. For an essay that shows unusual sensi-

tivity to the influence of neo-Kantian moral philosophy upon Durkheim, see

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143 143

Edward Tiryakian, "Emile Durkheim," in Tom Bottomore and Robert Nisbet, editors, A History of Sociological Analysis, (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 187- 236.

42. Ibid., 34. 43. Ibid., 215. 44. Ibid., 215. 45. Durkheim, Moral Education, 115. Cf. Durkheim, Moral Education, 115-116:

"Conforming to the order of things because one is sure that it is everything that it ought to be is not submitting to a constraint. It is freely desiring this order, as- senting through an understanding of the cause .... We liberate ourselves through understanding; there is no other means of liberation."

46. Ibid., 119. 47. Ibid., 95. 48. Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy, 64. This Socratic conception of social

science is implicit in the following quotation taken from Moral Education: "The educator ... must, in addition, help the younger generations to become conscious of the new ideal toward which they tend confusedly. To orient them in that direc- tion it is not enough for him to conserve the past; he must prepare the future"

(12-13). In an essay composed in 1906, the example of Socrates is explicitly invoked to clarify this new conception of the political task of science. See Durk- heim, Sociology and Philosophy, 64-65. That Durkheim is not wholly willing to let go the forms of language that enable sociology to represent itself as legitimate successor to the classical legislator is suggested by the following passage also taken from Moral Education: "To the extent that societies become more complex and pliable, these transformations become more frequent and more significant. Thus we could say ... that our main task today is to create a morality" (106).

49. My interpretation of the epistemological dilemma posed for Durkheim by his investigation of religion owes a considerable debt to Thomas Gieryn, "Durkheim's Sociology of Scientific Knowledge," Journal of h;e History of the Behavioral Sciences, 18 (1982): 107-129; and to Joseph Larrain, "Durkheim's Concept of Ideology," Sociological Review, 28 (1980): 129-139.

50. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 493. 51. Ibid., 493. 52. Durkheim, Moral Education, 70. 53. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 486. 54. Ibid., 494. 55. Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals," 48. 56. Emile Durkheim, Pragmatism and Sociology, (New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1983), 105. On the question of the possible superfluity of social science, see Marks, "Durkheim's Theory of Anomie," 357: "If there is one way that Elementary Forms differs from every one of Durkheim's earlier works, it is that there is here no mention whatsoever of the scientist in his ameliorative role."

57. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 487. This conclusion was already apparent to Durkheim when he delivered the lectures that constitute Moral Education, although at that time it was not clear it needed to be applied to the authority of science itself: "In a word, authority does not reside in some external, objective fact, which logically implies and necessarily produces morality. It consists entirely in the conception that men have of such a fact, it is a matter of opinion, and opinion is a collective thing .... It is therefore from society that all authority emanates" (91).

Edward Tiryakian, "Emile Durkheim," in Tom Bottomore and Robert Nisbet, editors, A History of Sociological Analysis, (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 187- 236.

42. Ibid., 34. 43. Ibid., 215. 44. Ibid., 215. 45. Durkheim, Moral Education, 115. Cf. Durkheim, Moral Education, 115-116:

"Conforming to the order of things because one is sure that it is everything that it ought to be is not submitting to a constraint. It is freely desiring this order, as- senting through an understanding of the cause .... We liberate ourselves through understanding; there is no other means of liberation."

46. Ibid., 119. 47. Ibid., 95. 48. Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy, 64. This Socratic conception of social

science is implicit in the following quotation taken from Moral Education: "The educator ... must, in addition, help the younger generations to become conscious of the new ideal toward which they tend confusedly. To orient them in that direc- tion it is not enough for him to conserve the past; he must prepare the future"

(12-13). In an essay composed in 1906, the example of Socrates is explicitly invoked to clarify this new conception of the political task of science. See Durk- heim, Sociology and Philosophy, 64-65. That Durkheim is not wholly willing to let go the forms of language that enable sociology to represent itself as legitimate successor to the classical legislator is suggested by the following passage also taken from Moral Education: "To the extent that societies become more complex and pliable, these transformations become more frequent and more significant. Thus we could say ... that our main task today is to create a morality" (106).

49. My interpretation of the epistemological dilemma posed for Durkheim by his investigation of religion owes a considerable debt to Thomas Gieryn, "Durkheim's Sociology of Scientific Knowledge," Journal of h;e History of the Behavioral Sciences, 18 (1982): 107-129; and to Joseph Larrain, "Durkheim's Concept of Ideology," Sociological Review, 28 (1980): 129-139.

50. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 493. 51. Ibid., 493. 52. Durkheim, Moral Education, 70. 53. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 486. 54. Ibid., 494. 55. Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals," 48. 56. Emile Durkheim, Pragmatism and Sociology, (New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1983), 105. On the question of the possible superfluity of social science, see Marks, "Durkheim's Theory of Anomie," 357: "If there is one way that Elementary Forms differs from every one of Durkheim's earlier works, it is that there is here no mention whatsoever of the scientist in his ameliorative role."

57. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 487. This conclusion was already apparent to Durkheim when he delivered the lectures that constitute Moral Education, although at that time it was not clear it needed to be applied to the authority of science itself: "In a word, authority does not reside in some external, objective fact, which logically implies and necessarily produces morality. It consists entirely in the conception that men have of such a fact, it is a matter of opinion, and opinion is a collective thing .... It is therefore from society that all authority emanates" (91).

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144

58. Ibid., 239, 477. It should be clear that this claim about the relation between science and religion considerably qualifies that suggested in the Rules. There, Durkheim had argued that individuals can be induced to acknowledge the constraint that is a "characteristic trait of every social fact" through either of two qualitatively distinct methods: "Through religion he represents this state to him- self by the senses or symbolically; through science he arrives at an adequate and precise notion of it" (143). This dualism, which presupposes Durkheim's early posi- tivism, has become quite untenable by the time he publishes Elementary Forms.

59. Durkheim, Moral Education, 29. 60. Durkheim, Moral Education, 5. 61. Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals," 46. 62. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 1. 63. Ibid., 67. 64. Ibid., 54. 65. Ibid., 53. 66. Ibid., 73,66,76. 67. Ibid., 85. 68. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 489,480. 69. Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals," 51. 70. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 26. Cf. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 36: "Pragmatism affirms

the unity of the world, but it is a unity which is supple, flexible, polymorphous and

consisting of a mass of phenomena which is undivided but everchanging, like a lake in which the water, blown about by the wind, looks different at every moment, as it separates and comes together again, moving and changing in a thou- sand different ways."

71. Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals," 51. 72. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 104. 73. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 482. 74. Durkheim, Moral Education, 73. 75. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 483. 76. Ibid., 492. 77. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 305-306. 78. Ibid., 484. 79. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 105. 80. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 484. 81. Emile Durkheim, "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions," in

Robert Bellah, editor, Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society, 153. 82. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 89. 83. Durkheim, Division of Labor, 232. 84. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 73. 85. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 30. 86. Durkheim, Moral Education, 73. 87. Emile Durkheim, The Evolution of Educational Thought, (London: Routledge &

Kagan Paul, 1977), 275. 88. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 105. 89. Emile Durkheim, Primitive Classifications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1963), 88. 90. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 91-92. 91. Ibid., 92. 92. Ibid., 75.

144

58. Ibid., 239, 477. It should be clear that this claim about the relation between science and religion considerably qualifies that suggested in the Rules. There, Durkheim had argued that individuals can be induced to acknowledge the constraint that is a "characteristic trait of every social fact" through either of two qualitatively distinct methods: "Through religion he represents this state to him- self by the senses or symbolically; through science he arrives at an adequate and precise notion of it" (143). This dualism, which presupposes Durkheim's early posi- tivism, has become quite untenable by the time he publishes Elementary Forms.

59. Durkheim, Moral Education, 29. 60. Durkheim, Moral Education, 5. 61. Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals," 46. 62. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 1. 63. Ibid., 67. 64. Ibid., 54. 65. Ibid., 53. 66. Ibid., 73,66,76. 67. Ibid., 85. 68. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 489,480. 69. Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals," 51. 70. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 26. Cf. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 36: "Pragmatism affirms

the unity of the world, but it is a unity which is supple, flexible, polymorphous and

consisting of a mass of phenomena which is undivided but everchanging, like a lake in which the water, blown about by the wind, looks different at every moment, as it separates and comes together again, moving and changing in a thou- sand different ways."

71. Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals," 51. 72. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 104. 73. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 482. 74. Durkheim, Moral Education, 73. 75. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 483. 76. Ibid., 492. 77. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 305-306. 78. Ibid., 484. 79. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 105. 80. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 484. 81. Emile Durkheim, "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions," in

Robert Bellah, editor, Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society, 153. 82. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 89. 83. Durkheim, Division of Labor, 232. 84. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 73. 85. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 30. 86. Durkheim, Moral Education, 73. 87. Emile Durkheim, The Evolution of Educational Thought, (London: Routledge &

Kagan Paul, 1977), 275. 88. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 105. 89. Emile Durkheim, Primitive Classifications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1963), 88. 90. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 91-92. 91. Ibid., 92. 92. Ibid., 75.

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145 145

93. Durkheim, Evolution, 150. 94. In Jeffrey Alexander, The Antinomies of Classical Thought: Marx and Durkheim,

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), one finds the most sophisticated treatment of the evolution of Durkheim's intellectual history now available. However, contending that "by the later part of his career ..., Durkheim had com- pletely reversed the materialism that had characterized his earlier sociology" (296), i.e., that his recognition of earlier theoretical limitations generates a mature and self-consistent interpretation of social life in terms of "ideal forms," Alexan- der cannot acknowledge the tensions that continue to gnaw at the edges of Durk- heim's politics of knowledge.

95. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 89. 96. Ibid., 89. 97. Ibid., 90. 98. Ibid., 88. 99. Ibid., 86.

100. Ibid., 91, 86, 99. 101. Ibid., 99, 84. 102. Ibid., 84. 103. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 91, 87. 104. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 244. 105. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 475. 106. Emile Durkheim, "The Role of the State in Education," in Giddens, editor, Durk-

heim on Politics and the State, 177.

93. Durkheim, Evolution, 150. 94. In Jeffrey Alexander, The Antinomies of Classical Thought: Marx and Durkheim,

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), one finds the most sophisticated treatment of the evolution of Durkheim's intellectual history now available. However, contending that "by the later part of his career ..., Durkheim had com- pletely reversed the materialism that had characterized his earlier sociology" (296), i.e., that his recognition of earlier theoretical limitations generates a mature and self-consistent interpretation of social life in terms of "ideal forms," Alexan- der cannot acknowledge the tensions that continue to gnaw at the edges of Durk- heim's politics of knowledge.

95. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 89. 96. Ibid., 89. 97. Ibid., 90. 98. Ibid., 88. 99. Ibid., 86.

100. Ibid., 91, 86, 99. 101. Ibid., 99, 84. 102. Ibid., 84. 103. Durkheim, Pragmatism, 91, 87. 104. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 244. 105. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 475. 106. Emile Durkheim, "The Role of the State in Education," in Giddens, editor, Durk-

heim on Politics and the State, 177.

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