Abstract

Emile Durkheim began The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life with an injunction: “In order to identify the simplest and most primitive religion that observation can make known to us, we must first define what is properly understood as a religion”. Almost simultaneously, Max Weber would begin the long section on the sociology of religion in his unfinished work Economy and Society by insisting, “To define ‘religion’, to say what it is, is not possible at the start of a presentation such as this. Definition can be attempted, if at all, only at the conclusion of the study” (1978, p. 399). Durkheim’s insistence and Weber’s reticence are equally surprising. By and large, Durkheim’s writings are relatively sparing of definitions. He did not generally bother to define words that were already in common currency. “Religion” is unquestionably the most notable counterexample. On the other hand, Weber was far more scrupulous—one might even say obsessive—about defining terms that were not specifically his own, including “capitalism”, “class”, and “bureaucracy” to select only a few examples. Durkheim’s long disquisition on the definition of “religion” was as radically atypical of his modus operandi as was Weber’s avoidance. The question of religion’s definition provides a fruitful window into their opposing analyses of non-European societies as a means of characterizing European modernity, ways that derive in important respects from early modern depictions of “savages” and “Orientals”.

Highlights

  • Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations

  • The break with evolutionary approaches is most starkly exemplified by each author’s insistence of the rationality of non-European religious ideas, their refusal to condemn non-Europeans as irrational, even as they refuse to acknowledge them, to use Fabian’s (1983) term, as “coevals”. Both Durkheim and Weber draw on different Enlightenment paradigms for characterizing non-Europeans: polemical depictions of “savages” for Durkheim and “Orientals” for Weber

  • Emile Durkheim began The Elementary Forms of Religious Life with an injunction: “In order to identify the simplest and most primitive religion that observation can make known to us, we must first define what is properly understood as a religion” (Durkheim 1995, p. 21)

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Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. In the following two chapters on “The Leading Conceptions of the Elementary Religion”, Durkheim criticizes different theoretical accounts of the origins of religion that implicitly provide yet other bases for definition.

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