The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Translated by Joseph Ward, 1891- Swain
In this landmark 1912 study, Durkheim traveled to the Australian outback not to find God, but to find society. His investigation of Aboriginal totemism yielded one of sociology's most radical insights: when primitives worship the kangaroo or the eagle, they are worshipping nothing less than themselves, collective humanity rendered sacred. The totem is society's mirror, the sacred its clever disguise. Durkheim dismantles the notion that religion originates in fear of spirits or reverence for gods, arguing instead that the very distinction between sacred and profane emerges from the collective effervescence of communal ritual, the electric feeling of being woven into something larger than oneself. Religion, he concludes, is society's way of celebrating its own indispensability, a moral architecture built from the raw material of group belonging. A century later, this text remains the essential starting point for anyone asking why humans need to believe, why we gather in congregations, and what secret chemistry binds strangers into communities. It is required reading not because it offers comfortable answers, but because it asks the question that every other theory of religion must eventually confront.
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“It seems very strange that one must turn back, and be transported to the very beginnings of history, in order to arrive at an understanding of humanity as it is at present.””
— mile Durkheim
“The most barbarous and the most fantastic rites and the strangest myths translate some human need, some aspect of life, either individual or social.””
— mile Durkheim
“Anyone who has truly practiced a religion knows very well that it is [the set of regularly repeated actions that make up the cult] that stimulates the feelings of joy, inner peace, serenity, and enthusiasm that, for the faithful, stand as experimental proof of their beliefs. The cult is not merely a system of signs by which the faith is outwardly expressed; it is the sum total of means by which that faith is created and recreated periodically. Whether the cult consists of physical operations or mental ones, it is always the cult that is efficacious.””
— mile Durkheim
“While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter, without mutual relationships, tumble over one another like so many liquid molecules, encountering no central energy to retain, fix and organize them.””
— mile Durkheim
“it is a more or less complex system of myths, dogmas, rites and ceremonies.””
— mile Durkheim
“Thus the believer, like the delirious man, lives in a world peopled with beings and things which have only a verbal existence.””
— mile Durkheim
“Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites.””
— mile Durkheim
“Society in general, simply by its effect on men's minds, undoubtedly has all that is required to arouse the sensation of the divine. A society is to its members what a god is to its faithful. A god is first of all a being that man conceives of as superior to himself in some respects and one on whom he believes he depends.””
— mile Durkheim
“It is true that we take it as evident that social life depends upon its material foundation and bears its mark, just as the mental life of an individual depends upon his nervous system and in fact his whole organism. But collective consciousness is something more than a mere epiphenomenon of its morphological basis, just as individual consciousness is something more than a simple efflorescence of the nervous system.””
— mile Durkheim
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<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/the-elementary-forms-of-the-religious-life-06bddc88-f63a-4c60-9c4f-3c69fc8ce045"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by mile Durkheim free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/the-elementary-forms-of-the-religious-life-06bddc88-f63a-4c60-9c4f-3c69fc8ce045)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/the-elementary-forms-of-the-religious-life-06bddc88-f63a-4c60-9c4f-3c69fc8ce045][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by mile Durkheim free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/the-elementary-forms-of-the-religious-life-06bddc88-f63a-4c60-9c4f-3c69fc8ce045Cite this book
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Durkheim, mile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-elementary-forms-of-the-religious-life-06bddc88-f63a-4c60-9c4f-3c69fc8ce045.Durkheim, M. (n.d.). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-elementary-forms-of-the-religious-life-06bddc88-f63a-4c60-9c4f-3c69fc8ce045Durkheim, mile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-elementary-forms-of-the-religious-life-06bddc88-f63a-4c60-9c4f-3c69fc8ce045.
