LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Emile Durkheim: Individuals
built 635 days ago
Durkheim focused upon the observable and the measurable. A social fact such as social solidarity, he noted, "is a completely moral phenomenon which, taken by itself, does not lend itself to exact observation nor indeed to measurement." He was drawn to study various observable kinds of statistics, which record "the currents of daily life" (for example, market statistics); costumes, which record fashions; and works of art, which record taste. Psychology suffered on this count, Durkheim added, because psychological facts are "internal by definition," and therefore inaccessible; "it seems that they can be treated as external only by doing violence to their nature. For Durkheim, the preference would be to regard statistical series as standardized expressions of definite "things" distinct from any meaning that individuals attached to them.
Source:
[C]onsidering that Durkheim was first and last a moralist, when one looks as Durkheim’s moral assumptions and the goals of his pedagogical work one finds a fundamental congruence with those of Immanuel Kant. Durkheim acknowledged that his moral reasoning followed that of Kant’s closely, but with some additions and variation in terminology (Durkheim 1974a: 44 & 51). Durkheim’s last project was to be a complete and definitive work on moral pedagogy titled La Morale, and the proposed chapter titles indicated Durkheim’s development of Kant’s moral system (Durkheim 1979: 78). In particular, Durkheim’s outline for the chapter “The problem of the Kantian solution” shows he did not disagree with Kant’s moral altruism as much as with Kant’s starting point and the matter of how to implement Kant’s rules into practical action in different circumstances (Durkheim 1979: 33 & 78). In essence, Durkheim sought to give Kantian moral theory a new base: he sought to do away with . priori philosophical categories and the logical autonomy of the individual as a starting point, and instead to base a very similar set of moral assumptions of duty and self-sacrifice on a social basis with society as the starting point and the only justification for morality (Durkheim 1974a: 52).
Source:
Durkheim was concerned with the characteristics of groups andstructures rather than with individual attributes. He focused onsuch problems as the cohesion or lack of cohesion of specificreligious groups, not on the individual traits of religiousbelievers. He showed that such group properties are independentof individual traits and must therefore be studied in their ownright. He examined different rates of behavior in specifiedpopulations and characteristics of particular groups or changesof such characteristics. For example, a significant increase ofsuicide rates in a particular group indicates that the socialcohesion in that group has been weakened and its members are nolonger sufficiently protected against existential crises.
Source:
Durkheim saw man as a duality in tension between his biological nature and society. He viewed logical thought and morality as social creations, the product of an impersonal and universalizing collective consciousness. Durkheim was not opposed to individualism because he understood that specialization within society required it. But he sought to elevate the self-interest of egoistic individualism to the values enforced by the French Revolution -- namely, the dignity and equality of all individuals. This "moral individualism" was the means by which he reconciled the higher impersonal morality of collective consciousness with the selfishness of egoistic individualism. By making the demand for equality of all individuals a moral imperative, society as a whole asserted its collective will ...setting the battle lines in the struggle with the pre-social aspect of human nature, which would place individual interests above the common good if not held in check.22 You may sense a contradiction here in Durkheim’s reasoning, since pre-social man was actually primitive man ....the one so prone to surrendering himself to the exultation of his clan’s collective identity .....the one inclined to respond to instinct rather than ethical reason. There isn’t supposed to be a third category of "natural man" ...the individual outside the context of society.
Source:
Durkheim assigned a passive role to both. In his insistence that facts are "things" he held that they cannot be modified by a "simple act of the [observer's] will"; in his insistence that the observer free himself of all previous preoccupations, he called on him not to attempt to influence empirical facts, but to let them impress themselves upon his mind according to their inherent properties. In these ways the observer is regarded as passive. And because facts are "social," they enjoy an existence independent from the individual, work their influence upon him despite his efforts to resist, and are governed by laws specific to the social level. In these senses, actors as individuals contribute little to sociological knowledge
Source:
Durkheim compared many societies in the world and concluded that there are two different types of force that integrate separate segments of a society. He called these two patterns “mechanical solidarity” and “organic solidarity.” Mechanical solidarity applies to societies in which all members have common and shared social experiences, and special subdivisions within a society are either absent or weak. Because of this homogeneity, each individual is directly and equally attached to the society. An example of a mechanical solidarity society is a hunting and gathering society, which is small and simple enough to keep the similarity among individuals of the group.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Individuals