The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Emile Durkheim - The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

One-hundred years after its first publication, we resurrect here a scholarly tome written by one of the foremost fathers of sociology, Émile Durkheim. Much of Durkheim’s work was concerned with how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in modernity; an era in which traditional social and religious ties are no longer assumed, and in which new social institutions have come into being. The “modernity” of one-hundred years ago seems quaint to us today but the questions Émile sought to explore and answer then are perhaps even more urgent today. In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Durkheim lays bare the roots of human religiosity through an in-depth examination of the most primitive forms of religion then known on the very edges of an ever-encroaching “modernity”. Through this look at “primitive” man, perhaps we can find a deeper understanding of our own soul, what its needs are, and what drives it.

Book Details

Author: Emile Durkheim

Print Length: 504 pages

Publisher: Auro e-Books

Original source: Internet Archive

Contributors: Blindshiva

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English

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Contents

Introduction

BOOK I PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS

  • CHAPTER I DEFINITION OF RELIGIOUS PHENOMENA#AND OF RELIGION
  • CHAPTER II LEADING CONCEPTIONS OF#THE ELEMENTARY RELIGION
    • I.— Animism
  • CHAPTER III LEADING CONCEPTIONS OF#THE ELEMENTARY RELIGION
    • II.— Naturism
  • CHAPTER IV TOTEMISM AS AN ELEMENTARY RELIGION

BOOK II THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS

  • CHAPTER I TOTEMIC BELIEFS
    • The Totem as Name and as Emblem
  • CHAPTER II TOTEMIC BELIEFS
    • The Totemic Animal and Man
  • CHAPTER III TOTEMIC BELIEFS
    • The Cosmological System of Totemism#and the Idea of Class
  • CHAPTER IV TOTEMIC BELIEFS
    • The Individual Totem and the Sexual Totem
  • CHAPTER V ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS
    • Critical Examination of Preceding Theories
  • CHAPTER VI ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS
    • The Notion of the Totemic Principle, or Mana, and the Idea of Force
  • CHAPTER VII ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS
    • Origin of the Idea of the Totemic Principle or Mana
  • CHAPTER VIII THE IDEA OF THE SOUL
  • CHAPTER IX THE IDEA OF SPIRITS AND GODS

BOOK III THE PRINCIPAL RITUAL ATTITUDES

  • CHAPTER I THE NEGATIVE CULT AND ITS FUNCTIONS THE ASCETIC RITES
  • CHAPTER II THE POSITIVE CULT
    • I. The Elements of the Sacrifice
  • CHAPTER III THE POSITIVE CULT
    • II. Imitative Rites and the Principle of Causality
  • CHAPTER IV THE POSITIVE CULT
    • III.  Representative or Commemorative Rites
  • CHAPTER V PIACULAR RITES AND THE AMBIGUITY OF THE NOTION OF SACREDNESS

CONCLUSION

About the Author

Sample

The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

At the beginning of this work we announced that the religion whose study we were taking up contained within it the most characteristic elements of the religious life. The exactness of this proposition may now be verified. Howsoever simple the system which we have studied may be, we have found within it all the great ideas and the principal ritual attitudes which are at the basis of even the most advanced religions: the division of things into sacred and profane, the notions of the soul, of spirits, of mythical personalities, and of a national and even international divinity, a negative cult with ascetic practices which are its exaggerated form, rites of oblation and communion, imitative rites, commemorative rites and expiatory rites; nothing essential is lacking. We are thus in a position to hope that the results at which we have arrived are not peculiar to totemism alone, but can aid us in an understanding of what religion in general is.

It may be objected that one single religion, whatever its field of extension may be, is too narrow a base for such an induction. We have not dreamed for a moment of ignoring the fact that an extended verification may add to the authority of a theory, but it is equally true that when a law has been proven by one well-made experiment, this proof is valid universally. If in one single case a scientist succeeded in finding out the secret of the life of even the most protoplasmic creature that can be imagined, the truths thus obtained would be applicable to all living beings, even the most advanced. Then if, in our studies of these very humble societies, we have really succeeded in discovering some of the elements out of which the most fundamental religious notions are made up, there is no reason for not extending the most general results of our researches to other religions. In fact, it is inconceivable that the same effect may be due now to one cause, now to another, according to the circumstances, unless the two causes are at bottom only one. A single idea cannot express one reality here and another one there, unless the duality is only apparent. If among certain peoples the ideas of sacredness, the soul and God are to be explained sociologically, it should be presumed scientifically that, in principle, the same explanation is valid for all the peoples among whom these same ideas are found with the same essential characteristics. Therefore, supposing that we have not been deceived, certain at least of our conclusions can be legitimately generalized. The moment has come to disengage these. And an induction of this sort, having at its foundation a clearly defined experiment, is less adventurous than many summary generalizations which, while attempting to reach the essence of religion at once, without resting upon the careful analysis of any religion in particular, greatly risk losing themselves in space.

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