Author: drablos

I was particularly interested in our talk about the passage on page 321. Society lifts us up above ourselves and does violence to our natural appetites. I did not realize that this was a call to the dual nature of man. This point solidified in my mind when we discussed how man jumps between the worlds of the sacred and the profane during office-hours. Rituals allow the man to become sacred, and the rest of the time man is profane during everyday tasks. For Durkheim, the sacred, or social, part of the man lifts him from what he could normally do alone. The social part of the man sees the benefits of society and prevents the profane nature of the man to break societal norms. This prevention is the very violence to the profane man’s natural appetites. The social and sacred man then seems to contain all of the morality within the man. The social man is the authority of society.

I was also interested in our discussion of the weight of words. Words themselves have different levels of the weight they carry. An example of this are the words “small” and “minute”. “Small” is slightly ambiguous but is commonly known as less than average. “Minute” has more weight to it. It is something even smaller than small. There are other things that cannot even be expressed by words. I believe the use of totems was designed as a way to fix this. It gave tangible meaning and understanding to things unable to be explained by words.

 

A point in class that resounded within me was how Durkheim’s definition of the soul is vastly different than our modern view. When I did the reading, I was confused because I tried to understand the modern view of the soul through Durkheim’s explanation. In reality, the soul is completely different for Durkheim. The modern view of the soul sees the soul as the human part of us. The body is the vessel through which our soul and personality can interact with the world. Because of this, the soul is considered extremely personal. Everyone has a soul that is separate from the souls of others. This is why you here the words “soul mate” when someone is talking about his or her spouse. We believe there is one other soul/person, separate from everyone else, that we are meant to be with for the rest of our lives.

Durkheim’s idea of the soul appears to be much less individual. While he would agree that the soul is where the personality comes from, he would argue that the personality comes from the same force or “mana”. The only difference between each person is a temporal boundary that causes the “mana” to be refracted into different personalities (273). This is why the soul is viewed as immortal to the indigenous tribes. They believe the soul carries on after death with the life force of the clan. Within each member of the clan is a part of the clan’s collective soul.

I think one of the more important issues we discussed today is that there are certain axioms that come with Durkheim’s argument about how religion and society serve the same purpose. We could spent a lot of time needlessly discussing the “why” questions about his argument. We had an example of a “why” question today when someone asked about asocial people who are not morally compelled to follow the rules of society. Why would Durkheim say that each person has an innate compulsion to follow society or religion if there are asocial people? Though this is an important question for an individual person, it is easier to understand his argument if looked at with a broader scope and with certain axioms taken as true, like each person is morally inclined to obey societal rules. Once I realized this, all the pieces of his argument started to come together and make sense in my head.

One thing that I wish we discussed a little more was Durkheim’s statement that sacredness is not intrinsic. It is instead something that we add to an object. I feel like this statement is important in his overall view of religion and society. Religion has no meaning if humanity does not ascribe meaning to it. As a sacred idea, religion itself has the same function as a totem for all of humankind. It is an ideology that serves to explain the intangible force that brings people together to society.

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