Assignment #2
Sociology and Social Facts
Emile Durkheim (1897)
Sociology has been in vogue for some time. Today this word, little known
and almost discredited a decade ago, is in common use. Representatives of
the new science are increasing in number and there is something like a public
feeling favorable to it. Much is expected of it. It must be confessed, however,
that results up to the present time are not really proportionate to the
number of publications nor the interest which they arouse. The progress
of a science is proven by the progress toward solution of the problems it
treats. It is said to be advancing when laws hitherto unknown are discovered,
or when at least new facts are acquired modifying the formulation of these
problems even though not furnishing a final solution. Unfortunately, there
is good reason why sociology does not appear in this light, and this is
because the problems it proposes are not usually clear-cut. It is still
in the stage of system building and philosophical syntheses. Instead of
attempting to cast light on a limited portion of the social field, it prefers
brilliant generalities reflecting all sorts of questions to definite treatment
of any one. Such a method may indeed momentarily satisfy public curiosity
by offering it so-called illumination on all sorts of subjects, but it can
achieve nothing objective. Brief studies and hasty intuitions are not enough
for the discovery of the laws of so complex a reality. And, above all, such
large and
abrupt generalizations are not capable of any sort of proof. All that is
accomplished is the occasional citation of some favorable examples illustrative
of the hypothesis considered, but an illustration is not a proof Besides,
when so many various matters are dealt with, none is competently treated
and only casual sources can be employed, with no means to make a critical
estimate of them. Works of pure sociology are accordingly of little use
to whoever insists on treating only definite questions, for most of them
belong to no particular branch of research and in addition lack really authoritative
documentation.
Believers in the future of the science must, of course, be anxious to
put an end to this state of affairs. If it should continue, sociology would
soon relapse into its old
discredit and only the enemies of reason could rejoice at this. The human
mind would suffer a grievous setback if this segment of reality which alone
has so far denied or defied it should escape it even temporarily. There
is nothing necessarily discouraging in the incompleteness of the results
thus far obtained. They should arouse new efforts, not surrender. A science
so recent cannot be criticized for errors and probings if it sees to it
that their recurrence is avoided. Sociology should, then, renounce none
of its aims; but, on the other hand, if it is to satisfy the hopes placed
in it, it must try to become more than a new sort of philosophical literature.
Instead of contenting himself with metaphysical reflection on social themes,
the sociologist must take as the object of his research groups of facts
clearly circumscribed, capable of ready definition, with definite limits,
and adhere strictly to them. Such auxiliary subjects as history, ethnography
and statistics are indispensable. The only danger is that their findings
may never really be related to the subject he seeks to embrace; for, carefully
as he may delimit this subject, it is so rich and varied that it contains
inexhaustible and unsuspected tributary fields. But this is not conclusive.
If he proceeds accordingly, even though his factual resources are incomplete
and his formulae too narrow, he will have nevertheless performed a useful
task for future continuation. Conceptions with some objective foundation
are not restricted to the personality of their author. They have an impersonal
quality which others may take up and pursue; they are transmissible. This
makes possible some continuity in scientific labor, continuity upon which
progress depends.
It is in this spirit that the work here presented has been conceived.
Suicide has been chosen as its subject, among the various subjects that
we have had occasion to study in our teaching career, because few are more
accurately to be defined and because it seemed to us particularly timely;
its limits have even required study in a preliminary work. On the other
hand, by such concentration, real laws are discoverable which demonstrate
the possibility of sociology better than any dialectical argument. The ones
we hope to have demonstrated will appear. Of course we must have made more
than one error, must have overextended the facts observed in our inductions.
But at least each proposition carries its proofs with it and we have tried
to make them as numerous as possible. Most of all, we have striven in each
case to separate the argument and interpretation from the facts interpreted.
Thus the reader can judge what is relevant in our explanations without being
confused.
Moreover, by thus restricting the research, one is by no means deprived
of broad
views and general insights. On the contrary, we think we have established
a certain number of propositions concerning marriage, widowhood, family
life, religious society, etc., which, if we are not mistaken, are more instructive
than the common theories of moralists as to the nature of these conditions
or institutions. There will even emerge from our study some suggestions
concerning the causes of the general contemporary maladjustment being undergone
by European societies and concerning remedies which may relieve it. One
must not believe that a general condition can only be explained with the
aid of generalities. It may appertain to specific causes which can only
be determined if carefully studied through no less definite manifestations
expressive of them. Suicide as it exists today is precisely one of the forms
through which the collective affection from which we suffer is transmitted;
thus it will aid us to understand this.
Finally, in the course of this work, but in a concrete and specific form,
will appear
the chief methodological problems elsewhere stated and examined by us in
greater detail [in The Rules of Sociological Method]. Indeed, among these
questions there is one to which the following work makes a contribution
too important for us to fail to call it immediately to the attention of
the reader.
Sociological method as we practice it rests wholly on the basic principle
that soc
facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual.
There
no principle for which we have received more criticism; but none is more
fun
mental. Indubitably for sociology to be possible, it must above all have
an object
its own. It must take cognizance of a reality which is not in the domain
of other s
ences. But if no reality exists outside of individual consciousness, it
wholly lacks a
material of its own. In that case, the only possible sub ect of observation
is the mental states of the individual, since nothing else exists. That,
however, is the field
psychology. From this point of view the essence of marriage, for example,
or t
family, or religion, consists of individual needs to which these institutions
supp
edly correspond: paternal affection, filial love, sexual desire, the so-called
religio
instinct, etc. These institutions themselves, with their varied and complex
historl
forms, become negligible and of little significance. Being superficial,
contingent e
pressions of the general characteristics of the nature of the individual,
they are b
one of its aspects and call for no special investigation. Of course, it
may occasions be interesting to see how these eternal sentiments of humanity
have been outwardly manifested at different times in history; but as all
such manifestations are imperfect not much importance may be attached to
them. Indeed, in certain respects, they a better disregarded to permit more
attention to the original source whence flows their meaning and which they
imperfectly reflect. On the pretext of giving the s
ence a more solid foundation by establishing it upon the psychological constitute
of the individual, it is thus robbed of the only object proper to it. It
is not realiz
that there can be no sociology unless societies exist, and that societies
cannot exist
there are only individuals. Moreover, this view is not the least of the
causes which maintain the taste for vague generalities in sociology. How
can it be important to define the concrete forms of social life, if they
are thought to have only a borrowed existence?
But it seems hardly possible to us that there will not emerge, on the contrary,
from every page of this book, so to speak, the impression that the individual
is dominated by a moral reality greater than himself: namely, collective
reality. When each people is seen to have uts own suicide rate, more constant
than that of general mortality, that its growth is in accordance with a
coefficient of acceleration characteristic of each society; when it appears
that the variations through which it passes at different times of the day,
month, year, merely reflect the rhythm of social life; and that marriage,
divorce, the family, religious societies, the army, etc., affect it in accordance
with definite laws, some of which may even be numerically expressed--these
states and institutions will no longer be regarded simply as characterless,
ineffective ideological arrangements. Rather they will be felt to be real,
living, active forces which, because of the way they determine the individual,
prove their independence of him; which, if the individual enters as an element
in the combination whence these forces ensue, at least control him once
they are formed. Thus it will appear more clearly why sociology can and
must be objective, since it deals with realities as definite and substantial
as those of the psychologist or the biologist.
|
