Das Video kommt von YouTube: erst beim Abspielen verbindet sich die Seite mit YouTube (Google).
Emile Durkheim on Religion. Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Durkheimian theory of religion
Das Wichtigste aus dem Video
Tipp auf eine Zeit – das Video springt genau dorthin.
Transkriptautomatisch erstellt · 135 Zeilen
- There are hundreds of definitions of religions. But the one suggested by Emile Durkheim is extremely popular. Many people would define religion very
- simply – it is a belief in the supernatural. But the Durkheimian definition of religion does not necessarily require a belief in the supernatural or a deity. Moreover,
- while most people think that beliefs and ideas are the primary to religious life, various rituals and customs come later as a result of those ideas. For Durkheim it is the opposite,
- religious practices are a priority. What matters is what people do when they practice a religion, not what they believe. To find out why this French thinker, who is considered one of the
- founding fathers of sociology, proposed such a revolutionary theory of religion, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of such theory, please watch to the end.
- This is the first video in the series of reviews on theories of religion. Once in a while I’ll be publishing them on the channel. So please consider subscribing to be updated.
- Durkheim emphasized the central role of society in understanding human thought and behavior. He went so far as to say that social facts are more fundamental than individual ones—that they are,
- as real as physical objects. Today such ideas aren’t as shocking but back in the 19th century it was revolutionary. Just like Freud, Durkheim too was driven to ask:
- What is religion? Why has it been so important and central in human affairs? What does it do for both the individual and society? He came to realization that religion and society are
- inseparable and—to each other— virtually indispensable. And the roots of religious behavior are not purely intellectual. It is not simply a need to understand how the world works.
- In his famous work on Suicide, Durkheim examines and compares the suicide rates in the major countries of Europe, he noticed that the figures were highest in Protestant countries,
- lowest in Catholic ones, and fell in between for countries of mixed religious population. In that work he classified four types of suicides. And mentions that “egoistic,”
- type of suicide is more typical—for Protestant countries than Catholic ones. For example, in his time in Britain, the suicide rate was twice as high as in Italy, but in Denmark
- it was 8 times higher than in Italy. So, Durkheim tried to find out why people were unhappy, why such anxiety? He believed that one of the reasons is the economic system, that is, the development
- of capitalism, competition, individualism and a departure from traditional values. Because in a pre-modern society, many decisions were made for you by others, your future job, your marriage
- partner, many things were predetermined. but now you were free to make your own decisions. with freedom, comes responsibility and often anxiety. However, besides this, Durkheim considered
- religion to also be one of the major factors. Catholics were more family and community-oriented. ties within the parish are strong and priests mediate between God and the believer. Sometimes
- it is easier to pray to some saint rather directly to God Almighty. In the Protestant tradition, there are empty walls, no icons, no statues with saints. people are “on their own” before God.
- Protestantism turned priests into laymen and laymen into priests. You make your own decisions and you are responsible for them. It would seem, therefore, that the rate of
- suicide in a community is inversely correlated to the degree of its social integration. The tighter the social ties, the lower the rate of suicide. In general, the methodology that Durkheim applied
- in this work marked the beginning of modern sociological research, and helped to separate sociology from psychology and social philosophy. Although Durkheim's father was a Jewish rabbi,
- at young age, Emile became an agnostic, believing that religion is a product of human society, it does not contain anything supernatural. But he was very careful and did not emphasize causality,
- for him religion was not inherently false or illusory, as Freud, for example, claimed. He took religion seriously, but he did not agree that behind it was the same reality that believers
- thought. To him the determining causes of religion always turn out to be social. Religion’s true purpose is not intellectual but social. He insists that although as individuals all of us
- make choices in our lives, we make them within a social framework that is a “given” for us from the day of birth. “We speak a language that we did not make; we use instruments that we did not invent.
- And it was the concept of the sacred that was really crucial. Religious people divide the things of their world into two separate arenas, but they are not the natural and supernatural. Rather, they
- are the realms of the sacred and the profane. In general, he pays great attention to rituals. For him, they are more important than any religious dogmas or beliefs. What matters
- is what people do when they practice a religion, not what they believe. Plus, he thought that the dogmas themselves were so vague and confusing that ordinary people could not understand them.
- Therefore, most people do not even care about what kind of dogmas my religion has, they simply accept that this is part of my culture, and often without questioning they simply follow its
- prescriptions and participate in rituals. Mainly because that's what everyone around them does. Durkheim tried to demonstrate that no matter how strange, wild or irrational a certain ritual may
- seem to an outside observer, in fact it had its own functionality and pragmatism. And in this regard, he applied the revolutionary methodological principle that the sociologist
- must take seriously the words of those whom they study. No matter how absurd the words of a person may sound, do not doubt their honesty, because to them the experience they share may be a deep
- reality. Therefore, if we see how some aboriginal worships a rock, or a Hindu eats bread after a rat, or an Orthodox drinks holy water with piety, then we should not mock them. Just like a patriot
- feels pain if someone burns or urinates on their national flag. Try to understand them and imagine with what eyes they look at the world. Then we’ll see that these objects a rock, bread, water,
- a flag, are not simple but sacred objects to them. They carry an extraordinary sacred symbolism, strength and energy. Durkheim shows that for such people there is a clear distinction between
- what is considered profane and ordinary and what is considered sacred or extraordinary. And when these people interact with such sacred things, they feel some kind of power coming out
- of them. And this power compels them to certain actions. But such objects, for instance the relics of a certain saint, can become sacred not because of their inherent supernatural qualities,
- but because a group of believers has fixed certain “collective ideals” on this object. And this hypothesis plays an important role in Durkheim's theory of religion. To him, the
- feeling of the sacred is common to all religions. Moreover, it is the basis of all religions. To a Catholic it may be a sculpture of Mary. It can carry a special power which may frighten
- that person or comfort them in a difficult life situation. That is, a believer can rely on the sculpture as a source of strength, protection and inspiration. Many people will say that
- after participating in a liturgy or ritual, they are filled with strength and energy. And for them it is so real that they are convinced that this inexplicable force
- existed even before they were born and will remain after their death. it acts from outside and it affects not only you, but the entire religious community, - it unites everyone.
- As Dr. Heerikhuizen of the University of Amsterdam explains, Durkheim interprets the source of this power not in supernatural terms, as believers think.
- This is the power of society itself. It is society that supports and comforts us in moments of difficulties and grief. It is society that gives us this special feeling of energy and strength.
- After all, society existed long before our birth and it will exist long after our death. And all these religious myths and images are just a product of society, which in
- a metaphorical way conveys to us something that is difficult for us to imagine and comprehend. We also can see a difference between the approaches of Durkheim and Weber. For Max Weber,
- it was the opposite. He emphasized the great importance of what people believe in. Therefore, he compared various religious systems with each other. Weber was convinced that it is what you
- believe that really matters and makes society move into one direction or another. And ultimately it will affect the culture, the economy and so on. Likewise, Tylor and Frazer thought that beliefs
- and ideas about the world are the primary elements in the religious life. Religion’s practices—its customs and rituals—are seen as secondary; they follow from the beliefs
- and depend upon them. Therefore, it was reasonable for them to use the comparative method when they picked out customs and beliefs casually from around the world and then arrange them.
- Durkheim rejected such intellectualistic approach. Here is the quote from Daniel Pals on Durkheim: “For him the rituals of religion have priority;
- it is they that are always basic and actually create the beliefs that accompany them. If there is anything “eternal” about religion, he says, it is that a society
- always needs rites—ceremonial activities of renewal and rededication. Through them, people are reminded that the group always matters more than any of its single members. Beliefs,
- by contrast, are not so eternal… Beliefs are the “speculative side” of religion.” It basically means that it doesn’t really matter whether you are a Jew or a Muslim.
- Ideas always change but the need for ceremonies always remains; Therefore, rituals are the true source of social unity. They represent the true meaning of religion.
- That is why Durkheim insisted that we need to start with so-called primitive peoples and examine in detail their simple culture. Therefore, he chose to study the Arunta tribe in Australia.
- Eventually the method proposed by Durkheim was pretty much recognized in social sciences. Before going on to comparisons it is important to investigate one and only one society in depth
- first. At the same time, previous methodology used by Tylor or Frazer is currently rejected by most scholars. About the works of Tylor and Frazer I will make a separate video review.
- Another reason why the baggage of the entire mythology does not play a big role is that behind all beliefs there is one and the same reality - society. Therefore, it doesn’t matter
- which deity you believe in - it can be the almighty Jehovah or the Totem of your tribe. Once again, from the point of view of Durkheim, behind all beliefs and
- mythologies there is one and the same reality that is hidden, it is social. For him, when believers worship a deity, they are actually worshiping their society. As
- Durkheim thinks, the believer is not mistaken when they believe that there is some power or object that is above them, this object really exists, and this object is society. Therefore,
- it is necessary to investigate not what people believe, but what religion does for a person. And according to Durkheim, religion promotes social solidarity, gives people a sense of belonging;
- a community feeling with one another; it also regulates individual’s behavior, gives meaning and purpose to life; maintains the moral and social code of the group. And Durkheim
- believed that this was enough to give people a feeling that something supernatural is going on. At the same time, I should mention that Durkheim tries to avoid references to the supernatural,
- since this is a relatively new term associated with the development of science. That is, in the past, people did not think in such categories. The idea of natural VS supernatural
- is a quite recent idea. As Durkheim notes: Because social pressure makes itself felt through mental channels, it was bound to give man the
- idea that outside him there are one or several powers, moral yet mighty, to which he is subject. Since they speak to him in a tone of command, and sometimes even tell him to violate his most
- natural inclinations, man was bound to imagine them as being external to him. At the same time, rituals reinforce collective consciousness and beliefs
- of members of a particular clan or tribe. And here Durkheim would probably attribute similar feelings to a group of fans gathered for a soccer game or for a pop music concert.
- Because another important aspect of Durkheim's theory is that religion is flexible and will fight for its survival. He writes: However, religion seems destined to transform itself rather than
- disappear. I have said that there is something eternal in religion: the cult and the faith. That is, people are more likely to continue to adopt different forms, and interpretations
- of religion. After all, society itself is not something fixed. It is a process. And according to Durkheim, it turns out that society, even in the distant future will continue
- to create religions that will correspond to their dreams, ideals and aspirations. No matter how radical a technological idea might be, for example cryopreservation. At
- some point religion will find theological justification and will embrace it. religious ethics will more likely become flexible and follow modernization. by being nimble and
- by adjusting to the new ‘rules of the game’ religion will survive. This way we see the emphasis on a functional approach to religion. Again, if we talk about
- intellectualist approach of Tylor or Frazer, ideas and beliefs are the key to explaining other cultures. Or similarly phenomenological approaches of William James or Rudolf Otto, where just like
- Tylor and Frazer they take more or less at face value the beliefs that religious people hold and then ask how those beliefs explain their lives and deeds. For James or Otto, the religious experience
- or the internal transformation is what matters so they put emphasis on feelings. Durkheim, however, keeps thinking not about personal religious experience like James does, Durkheim
- puts community and the functions religious practices play for society at the center. Just like Freud, Durkheim wants to ask questions. If we agree that various beliefs are absurd,
- then why do people hold them? If such ideas are silly superstitions, they nonetheless do not die easily. Why do they survive? And the answer lies not on its surface
- but underneath. For Durkheim the case of Australian totemism clearly shows, religion’s key value lies in the ceremonies that encourage individual’s loyalty to the
- group. And only later these rituals create a need for symbolic ideological explanation. Sorry if I am confusing you, I hope that the idea is simple. First comes ritual and only then ideas
- about ancestors, afterlife, gods and so on. Another important realization out of this theory is that if a society truly needs such rites to survive and flourish,
- there can never be a community without either a religion or something similar to fill its place. So, even when religious dogmas are thought to be false and absurd, religious behavior can remain
- very much alive. Relying on that, some could explain the phenomenon of churches for atheists or so-called secular religions and secular rituals. Thus for Durkheim, religion seems to be
- eternal. Society cannot exist without it. He also makes no particular distinction between religious and secular rituals. Society cannot exist without ceremony; therefore, religion will persist.
- And we see that some critiques of secularization theory like to use the Durkheimian definition of religion as a collective thing, which focuses not on belief in the supernatural,
- but on the concept of the sacred. Where by religion he means a system of beliefs and practices associated with something sacred. As you may see, belief in God is not required.
- And such different understanding of what religion means often creates a serious problem. For example, it led to a confrontation between biologists Richard Dawkins joined by
- Jerry Coyne the author of Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible and David Sloan Wilson the author of Darwin’s Cathedral. All three are non-believers but
- because they give different definitions to religion, they treat it differently. For Dawkins and Coyne, it's simple – religion is a belief in supernatural agency, stop believing
- in any paranormal nonsense and the world will become a better and more rational place. But for Sloane Wilson it’s not enough, he believes that since religion originally helped us as
- species to survive evolutionary, then we need it. It is beneficial and can help our species to live a better moral life. Wilson, following Durkheim, believes that people should believe
- in something sacred and worship it. We can fix ourselves on some higher sacred thing, not necessarily supernatural, for example “The Welfare of the Earth” and we can work towards
- fulfilment of that goal. It can become the future religion of humanity that will unite everyone. But do we really need such a broad definition of religion? Why even call it a religion? Is it
- reasonable like Durkheim not to differentiate between religious and secular rituals? Mircea Eliade also stated in his Sacred and Profane: the great majority of the irreligious
- are not liberated from religious behavior… It is no less to be seen in movements that openly avow themselves to be secular or even antireligious. But how true is that? Did Durkheim himself
- as an agnostic have a necessity in communal rituals and ceremonies? So, we obviously see here a clash of wide and more narrow definitions of religion.
- Now let’s switch to critiques. Daniel Pals notices three major areas of criticism: Durkheim’s assumptions about the nature of religion, his Australian evidence,
- and his “reductionist” conclusions. Let's start with the problem of definition. If it is so crucial to distinguish between the sacred and profane from social events
- and private affairs, then how universal are these categories. Can we really easily distinguish them in all modern societies? Some experts question the clear separation between the sacred and the
- profane in some cultures throughout history, and this is not some small thing, it is at the heart of Durkheim's theory. Scholars point that Primitive peoples do not in all cases manage to
- separate the sacred from the profane, especially in the absolute way that Durkheim says they must. Also, is religion indeed nothing more than the expression of social needs? If religion
- cannot be defined as belief in the realm of the supernatural only because primitive peoples of the world had no such concept. Some scholars may question the assumption that for them,
- all events are the same; that there is no supernatural realm separate from the natural; and there is only the sacred and social, which they separate from the profane and personal.
- Primitive peoples may not have exactly our concept of the supernatural, but they do hold ideas about mystical or extraordinary kinds of events which are quite similar to our modern conceptions.
- It is important to understand that while the aborigine communities of Australia, became the basis for study of Durkheim. He did not travel, he relied on third-party sources. mainly
- on ethnographic reports of Spencer and Gillen. He wanted to demonstrate that the totemic religion of the Arunta tribe is an example of one of the most ancient and primitive forms of religion.
- Therefore, by studying it, we can see how religion has evolved. Here the totem was this sacred object, but for Durkheim the totem represented the tribe itself. That is, worshiping the totem,
- the aboriginals worshiped their society. Therefore, religion is nothing but a symbolic manifestation of society. And because of this, religion has an impersonal power over people.
- But look, Durkheim's critics have no particular problem when he states that religion is socially determined and is a social construct. Perhaps he is right in saying that it was religion that
- gave mankind the strongest sense of collective consciousness, that it is the fundamental social institution of mankind, which gave rise to most social structures, and large-scale cooperation.
- And yes, for most people, rituals are more important than faith. But sometimes Durkheim seems to be a reductionist, that is, he oversimplifies his conclusions and seems too dogmatic about them,
- like he has found a golden key. There might be a problem with his methodology. Pals reminds that a sociologist Gaston Richard, who had earlier worked with Durkheim,
- carefully examined the Australian reports and showed how, in a number of places, the evidence could be read to prove quite the opposite of what Durkheim concludes. Richard also claimed
- that most of Durkheim’s theory had been assembled before he ever looked at the Australian reports. In addition, the Australian reports themselves might not be completely accurate. But based on
- them Durkheim makes universal conclusions about religion. He overgeneralizes his views. It is hard to compare what religion meant and what role it played in primitive societies and what role it
- plays today. Also, modern secular societies give us the freedom to choose any religion we want, or choose none at all. Today, even members of the same family practice different religions.
- Inglehart reminds us that many societies move towards individual choice norms. There are millions of non-believers that prefer to stay out of communal practices. They are comfortable
- living their own lives without interacting much with religion. Check also Bowling alone by Robert Putnam for more details on that. Other people while being extremely spiritual
- and ritualistic focus on individual practices for their spiritual growth not on communal. Religion doesn’t only serve to meet social needs. Religion isn’t only about community and society. We can
- practice it individually and for various reasons, not only to maintain social solidarity. Nor can we limit the function of religion only as a means of unification. Sometimes it causes divisions and
- even wars. In addition, it can be an instrument of manipulation, oppression and political games. I also wonder what Durkheim might say about cargo cults. Will they fit into his theory?
- Durkheim almost always claims that society determines, while religion is the thing that is determined. Society controls; religion reflects. In each Australian instance he considers,
- Durkheim insists that society powerfully shapes religious ritual and belief, while religious beliefs never seem able to do the reverse. But is it true?
- Can we really claim that religion has only a social function? That social structure is always the reality, while religion is merely an appearance? Not really. To Durkheim religion
- as he calls it “effervescence” of social reality, it is nothing but the surface foam. His aim is to “reduce” religion to something other than what it appears to be. By some scholars of
- religion, it could be seen as one-sided and misleading. Therefore today, much of the evidence and most of the interpretation of totemism that Durkheim makes a part of his
- theory have come to be quite widely rejected. At the same time, today there are many people who like to rely on the Durkheimian definition of religion. It helps some to expand the idea
- of what religion means very widely and fit into that definition almost any ideology. To conclude, any theory has both strengths and weaknesses. Yes, Durkheim helped many to look
- at religion from the outside and through the depths of centuries. Yes, he inspired many to try to look deep and understand what is hidden under the surface of the ritualistic behavior of
- homo sapiens, but as we see, it isn’t that simple. And although today some scholars are still trying to find the golden key that could possibly explain the universal essence
- of religion. In Durkheim's case, his golden universal key couldn’t open some of the doors. I hope you’ve enjoyed the video. I would be interested to know your opinion about this theory,
- in the comments below, I read them all. Please consider to like and subscribe to stay tuned.
Zum Nachlesen
ReligionGeschichte konkreter Religionen · Afrikanische Religionen · Bahaitum · Buddhismus · Christentum · Daoismus · Hinduismus · Islam · Jainismus …
SupernaturalSupernatural (englisch für ‚übernatürlich', deutscher Untertitel: Zur Hölle mit dem Bösen) ist eine US-amerikanische Mysteryserie, die in Vancouver, Kanada, …