Henry Imler September 18th, 2007

Overall, I found Durkheim’s theory on religion fascinating. It was very interesting to see how his youth paralleled other revolutionary thinkers. Newton, Galileo and several major philosophers shared several aspects with him. First, each was an exceptionally bright youth that came from religious backgrounds. They all went to prestigious schools, but found themselves either bored or at odds with the established methods, theories, and systems of study. Both Newton and Galileo thought the Aristotelian method and ideas that the European schools were teaching were terrible and did most of their productive study on his own. This freedom in thought was instrumental in their intellectual breakthroughs. It was the same with Durkheim.

For Durkheim, everything was split into the sacred and the profane. There was no good/evil distinction between the two. Religion did not replace magic as Frazier had thought. Instead, magic was a private matter; religion on the other hand, was a social concern. He rebelled against Müller and Tylor’s evolutionary views of religion. Durkheim thought that this was the wrong approach. Durkheim thought that Müller and Tylor had tried to de-evolve religion of the day into a primordial religious state. Instead, Durkheim thought that the proper approach discovering the basis of religion was to locate the most elementary form of religion and study it scientifically. He ended up using a massive and detailed study of Aborigine tribes by Spencer and Gillen. From this study, he concluded that the totem was not magical or animalistic in nature, but was a social construct that served to promote the continuance of the tribe. This was his founding principle. Everything else flowed logically from this premise. For instance, it is easy to see how the soul originally was seen as “fragment of the ‘clan within” when one is operating off the idea that
the totem is a symbol of the personification of the clan. Once one understands where the idea of the soul comes from, the idea that the clan continues through time irrespective of its members is a simple inference. Likewise, since the soul is a personal piece of the immortal clan, it too must also continue through time after the death of its host.

Without going into more detail about Durkheim’s theory, it should be noted that it is not without its flaws. The first problem pertains to his data set. If Spencer and Gillen’s report was flawed, then it follows that Durkheim’s analysis would also be flawed. This is not to criticize his method, just his results. Next is his assumption that there is a single cause of religion. Although it was good that he did not attempt to de-evolve present day religion into a primordial one, it might be the case that there are independent causes for the rise of independent religions. Also, Durkheim assumes that what looks to the European eye to be the most primitive religion is actually the most primitive religion. In fact, all present day religions, all of them, have all evolved the same amount. Christianity in Europe had adapted to its surroundings just as the Aborigines had adapted their religion to their current situation. Each is a branch from the evolutionary tree that is equal in length. Time has not frozen over for the Aborigines and thus it would be foolish to assume that there have been no changes to their religion over time. In addition, the Australian outback is a unique environment. It would be foolhardy to assume that religions situated in another environment would look the same.

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