Anomia and Sin in Durkheim's Thought

Abstract

In 1887, Guyau published a work on religion in which he advocated as a rational alternative to dogmatism. Lalande ([1926] 1976: 61) believes that Guyau coined term to designate le nom d'anomie pour l'opposer a l'autonomie des Kantiens (Kant's autonomy, with its heavy sense of duty was indeed repressive). Durkheim reviewed Guyau's book that same year (in Pickering, 1975: 24-38) and expressed no problem with Guyau's definition of anomie, only with his treatment of individualism as a correlate of anomie. Orru (1983) thinks that Durkheim actually learned of concept of anomie from Guyau, which would be difficult to prove, given Durkheim's rabbinical background, but is correct that Durkheim knew of it long before his Division of Labor (1893). A superficial glance at word and its derivatives (anomia, anomy) has been sufficient to convince a generation of scholars that it is derived from of But Lyonnet and Sabourin (1970: 42-43), in their analysis of Biblical use of as sin, challenge belief that really means etymology, a-nomos, would suggest: 'lawlessness,' disobedience to, disrespect for law. They note that nowhere in New Testament is anomia related to nomos, 'law'. Guyau and Durkheim were aware of this, and referred to rule, not law, in their discussions of anomy. Thus Guyau ([1887] 1962: 374) claimed that what we have called moral anomy is the absence of any fixed moral rule. Durkheim used this classical notion of as lack of rule in Division of Labor ([1893] 1933: 431), Suicide ([1897] 1951: 257), Socialism and SaintSimon ([1896] 1958: 240) and elsewhere. Lalande ([1926] 1976: 906-907) warns that Durkheim's use of regle should not be confounded with vulgar meanings of law or norm sometimes attached to it. Regle was used in 19th century in classical Greek sense of a formula which prescribes existence of a phenomenon. Indeed, Robert Hertz (1922), one of Durkheim's most brilliant disciples, treated sin as anomia, that is, as an attack on a moral order that does not necessarily imply accomplishment of an act, and that is radically different from crime. Nielsen (1983) has explored anomia-sin connection with regard to