Emile Durkheim and After: The War over the Sacred in French Sociology in the 20th Century

Abstract

This article analyzes the main lines of the French debate or ‘war’ over the ‘sacred’ during the 20th century. Durkheim, who emphasized the social origin of religion and its integrating function, tied this idea closely together with the sacred/profane -distinction: it is through this distinction that society reflects itself in individuals and imposes its norms and values on them. On the other hand, he explains the alleged universality of the distinction precisely by its social origin. In spite of Durkheim's emphasis on the central place of the sacred in the analysis of religion, the French religious sociology has ever since contested this claim. However, the article claims that these criticisms can be divided into two categories depending on the reasons given for the attack against the Durkheimian conception. These critical approaches, in turn, constitute two ultimately antagonistic sets of theories of the religious itself. The defenders of the ‘subjective sacred’ (Eliade) find the Durkheimian thesis about the social origin of the sacred reductionist, whereas the proponents of the ‘non-existentialist’ theory (Lévi-Strauss) contest not only the universality but the very existence of the sacred. As a last ‘act’ of the French war over the sacred, the article discusses René Girard's attempt to bring back the problem of sacred by linking it to the intrinsically mimetic and hence violent nature of human desire. Two major conclusions of this debate are drawn: 1) the equilibrium between the symbolic and the sacred has to be conserved in any viable theory of religion; 2) the ‘sacred’ is not to be conceived as an ideology, but rather as a category connected to the ritual side of religion.