Conclusion Sociology 100

1. ConclusionSociology 100 “Association itself is also an active factor productive of special effects. In itself it is therefore something new.”

2. Origins of Anomy • “Such is the source of the excitement predominating in this part of society, and which has thence extended to the other parts. There, the state of crisis and anomy is constant and, so to speak, normal.” (256) • “The man who has always pinned all his hopes on the future and lived with his eyes fixed upon it, has nothing in the past as a comfort against the present’s afflictions, for the past was nothing to him but a series of hastily experienced stages. [...] Weariness alone, moreover, is enough to bring disillusionment, for he cannot in the end escape the futility of an endless pursuit.” (256) • The doctrine of progress exalts this pursuit, but cannot guard against the experience of anomy (257) • “Anomy, therefore, is a regular and specific factor in our modern societies; one of the springs from which the annual contingent [of suicides] feeds.” (258)

3. Anomy and Suicide • Anomic suicide thus “results from man’s activity’s lacking regulation and his consequent sufferings.” (258) • Typified by disgust or disappointment. Also commonly characterized by violent recriminations against life in general or a specific person. (293) • As egoistic suicide is common among intellectual classes, anomic suicide is typical of the world of commerce and industry. (258) • Human beings need regulation & restraint • Durkheim’s theory on divorce & anomic suicide relies on the belief that men ‘naturally’ require a greater regulation of their sexuality, while women have weaker sex urges and thus don’t need it as much. (259-276) • This asserts as natural a socially constructed relationship, and is less useful for our purposes.

4. Suicide as Sociological Phenomenon • “Here at last we are face to face with real laws, allowing us to attempt a methodological classification of types of suicide.” (299) • “The conclusion from all these facts is that the social suicide-rate can be explained only sociologically.” • “This is why there is nothing which cannot serve as an occasion for suicide. It all depends on the intensity with which suicidogenic causes have affected the individual.” (300) • “No unhappiness in life necessarily causes a man to kill himself unless he is otherwise so inclined.” (306)

5. The Social Fact • “Not merely are there suicides each year, but there are as a general rule as many each year as in the year preceding. (308) • “The state of mind which causes men to kill themselves is not purely and simply transmitted, but—something much more remarkable—transmitted to an equal number of persons, all in such situations as to make the state of mind become an act.” • “Collective tendencies have an existence of their own; they are forces as real as cosmic forces, though of another sort; they, likewise, affect the individual from without, though through other channels. (309) • “The proof that the reality of collective tendencies is no less than that of cosmic forces is that this reality is demonstrated in the same way, by the uniformity of effects.” • Science

6. The Social Fact • “Individuals by combining form a psychical existence of a new species, which consequently has its own manner of thinking and feeling. (310) • “Of course the elementary qualities of which the social fact consists are present in germ in individual minds. But the social fact emerges from them only when they have been transformed by association since it is only then that it appears.” • “Association itself is also an active factor productive of special effects. In itself it is therefore something new.”

7. The Social Fact • “When the consciousness of individuals, instead of remaining isolated, becomes grouped and combined, something in the world has been altered. (310-311) • “Naturally, this change produces others, this novelty engenders other novelties, phenomena appear whose characteristic qualities are not found in the elements composing them.”

8. Social Cohesion • “Religion is in a word the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself; it is the characteristic way of thinking of collective existence.” (312) • The social fact of religion gives rise to individual states of mind that could not have existed without it. • In understanding religion, it is insufficient to only understand the individual experience of it, as the social experience must also be comprehended • “All we mean by affirming the distinction between the social and the individual is that the above observations apply not only to religion, but to laws, morals, customs, political institutions, pedagogical practices, etc. in a word to all forms of collective life.” (313)

9. Social Cohesion • “Originally society is everything, the individual nothing. (336) • “Consequently, the strongest social feelings are those connecting the individual with the collectivity; society is its own aim. • “As societies become greater in volume and complexity, 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. • “Since human personality is the only thing that appeals unanimously to all hearts, since its enhancement is the only aim that can be collectively pursued, it inevitably acquires exceptional value in the eyes of all. It thus rises far above all human aims, assuming a religious nature.” • Human rights as ‘religious’ • ‘Religion broadly (functionally) understood

10. Social Cohesion • “Under these conditions suicide must be classified among immoral acts; for in its main principle it denies the religion of humanity. (337) • “Society is injured because the sentiment is offended on which its most respected moral maxims today rest, a sentiment almost the only bond between its members, and which would be weakened if this offense could be committed with impunity. • “How could this sentiment maintain the least authority if the moral conscience did not protest its violation? From the moment that the human person is and must be considered something sacred, over which neither the individual nor the group has free disposal, any attack on it must be forbidden.” • An attack on the ‘religious’ foundations of modern society in the West

11. Two Questions • 1. Should the present state of suicide among be considered normal or abnormal? • 2. What attitude ought societies take toward suicide? • “Now there is no known society where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. [...] We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it. Consequently, it is normal.” (362) • “If it is normal that there should be crimes, it is normal that they should be punished. Punishment and crime are two terms of an inseparable pair. [...] Every abnormal relaxation of the system of repression results in stimulating criminality and giving it abnormal intensity.” (363) • Biological metaphor & equilibrium

12. Two Questions • “Let us apply these ideas to suicide.” (363) • Suicide never a matter of indifference to law • Morality & law may encourage or mandate it (altruistic, 363) • But societies that elevate the individual human being will forbid it & work to minimize the suicide rate • Unless social equilibrium is disturbed (364) • Too much emphasis on the value of the individual, not enough on that of society produces a rise in egoistic suicides • The tumult of progress and the ethic of perfection produces anomy • “Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general one, we cannot condemn it without condemning ourselves; we are too saturated with it not partly to excuse it.” (372)

13. Meaning & Suicide • The altruistic current in society has atrophied as the egoistic and anomic currents have strengthened. • “Thus, the only remedy for the ill [of suicide in the West] is to restore enough consistency to social groups for them to obtain a firmer grip on the individual, and for him to feel himself bound to them. He must feel himself more solidary with a collective existence which precedes him in time, which survives him, and which encompasses him at all points. (373-374)

14. Meaning & Suicide • “Life will resume meaning in his eyes, because it will recover its natural aim and orientation.” (374) • But what groups could accomplish this? • Not the state • Too big to feel solidarity except in emergency (374) • Not religion • It can no longer repress & bind thought, and its inability to do so means that the tide of free inquiry is irresistible (375) • Not the family • It has become impermanent due to divorce and mobility, and besides, no longer means what it once did (ancestral name, honor, lands, reputation, etc.) (376-378)

15. A More Integrated Future? • Besides these societies, “there is one other of which no mention has yet been made; that of all workers of the same sort, in association, all who cooperate in the same function, that is, the occupational group or corporation.” (378) • Permanent • Ever-present • Life-encompassing • Guilds • Requires a basic reorganization of society • SPOILER ALERT: • This never happens, but the point is that this is what Durkheim thinks is missing from modern society in the West