Epistemology in Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life

Terry F. Godlove

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 24, Number 3, July 1986,

pp. 385-401 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/hph.1986.0054

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hph/summary/v024/24.3godlove.html

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 Epistemology in Durkheim's
Elementary Forms of Religious Life
T E R R Y F. G O D L O V E , J R .

WHERE DO CATEGORIES such as space, time, quantity, quality, and relation

purchase their peculiar necessity and universality? For Kant, the answer lies
with the realization that objects o f experience must conform to those condi-
tions u n d e r which experience is possible. Thus, we explain the necessity
and universality of o u r f u n d a m e n t a l categories of experience not by a
causal account of their origin, but by showing that we cannot help but
presuppose them in all our empirical knowledge. I shall return to Kant's
solution at the end of this paper, but until then I want to examine l~mile
Durkheim's answer in the Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)? With
Kant, Durkheim (1858-1917) a r g u e d that we cannot explain this peculiar
necessity and universality so long as we view it as an effect caused by
something in the spatio-temporal world. But against Kant, and based on
this rejection of "empiricism," he went on to trace the modal structure of
the categories to an ideal object outside .the world, to an ideal object he
called "society."
Durkheim's sociological idealism has never been well received, most crit-
ics offering empirical patches and apologies. T h o u g h I have no interest in
d e f e n d i n g Durkheirn, I hope to show that his error lies at a deeper level
than his critics allege. For he righdy saw that no empirical investigation can
explain how it is that certain of o u r concepts are able to constrain any
empirical investigation whatever. After some brief historical remarks, I shall
argue that the idea o f society as an ideal entity emerges, for Durkheim, from
epistemological considerations which are not easily put off.

' I have generally followedthe translation by Joseph Ward Swain (New York: George Allen
& Unwin, Ltd., 1915), but have occasionallymodified it from the French (LesFormesklkmenl,aires
de la vie religiegse, le systkmetotkraiqueen Australie, 6th ed. [Paris: Presses Universitairesde France,
x979]). References to the ElementaryForms (EF) will henceforth appear in the text.

[~85]
386 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ~ 4 : 3 JULY 1986

As an English critic has recently noted, "a rounded assessment of Durk-

heim's epistemology has yet to be undertaken."' Since epistemological con-
siderations occupied Durkheim throughout his career, a rounded assessment
would have to take up at least The Rules of SociologicalMethod (x 895 ), Sociology
and Philosophy (1898-191i), Primitive ClassOication (19o3) (with Marcel
Mauss), and Pragmatism and Sociology (19t4). s But though the present essay
considers only a small part of Durkheim's epistemological writing, it treats, I
think, his most sustained, mature, and philosophically significant statement.
My aim is to throw Durkheim's theory into relief by holding it up against the
Kantian approach to epistemology it was meant to supersede.

1.

Between x879 and t88~, Durkheim studied at the i~cole Normale Sup6-
rieure, where he was influenced by, among others, Comte, and two neo-
Kantian teachers, Charles Bernard Renouvier and l~mile Boutroux. Comte's
influence was crucial; a recent biographer notes that, of all Comte's teach-
ing, "its most important element was precisely the extension of the scien-
tific attitude to the study of society. TM More specifically, Durkheim placed
himself in the Comtean methodological tradition through his lifelong alle-
giance to a hypothetico-deductive method. From Renouvier, Durkheim ab-
sorbed a particular view of the Kantian categories. The categories, rather
than given a priori---independent of all experience---are subject to practical
forces of both an individual and societal nature; that is, they could be other
than they are. From Boutroux came the idea that societal facts are irre-
ducible to psychological facts, a hallmark of Durkheim's sociology,s How-
ever, Durkheim soon rejected Boutroux's teleological mode of reasoning,

' John B. Allcock, "Editorial Introduction" to Durkheim's Pragmatism and Sociology (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), xl.
3 References for these works are as follows. Les R~gles de la n~thode sociologiq~e (Paris: Alcan,
1895); translated by S. A. Soiovay and J. H. Mueller (New York: The Free Press, 1964).
Sociologie et philosophic (Paris: Alcan, 195a); translated by D. F. Pocock (New York: Free Press,
1974). "De quelques formes primitives de classification: contribution ~, l'etude des representa-
tions collectives," Annie sodolog/que 6 (Paris 19ot-o2): 1-7a; translated with an introduction by
Rodney Needham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). P r ~ et sociologie (Paris:
Vrin, 1955); translated by J. C. Whitehouse.
4 Quotation is from Steven Lukes,/~m//e Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical
Study (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 68. See also, Warren Schmaus, "Hypotheses and
Historical Analysis in Durkheim's Sociological Methodology: A Comtean Tradition,'.' Studies in
History and Philosophy of Science 16, (March 1985): 1-3o.
5 Lukes, s Durkheim, 56-57. See below, note 9.
 EPISTEMOLOGY IN DURKHEIM 387
substituting a "causalist" account relying on the m e t h o d o f concomitant
variation. 6
As for D u r k h e i m ' s own r e a d i n g o f Kant, his friend Georges Davy re-
marks that D u r k h e i m the student was "suspicious" o f the Kantian philoso-
phy. 7 We will see that his "suspicions" a m o u n t e d to an outright rejection o f
the transcendental a p p r o a c h to epistemology. O n the other hand, many o f
his wridngs reflect a d e e p respect for Kant's moral philosophy, s
W h e t h e r f r o m his own e x p o s u r e to Kant, or t h r o u g h his neo-Kantian
teachers, D u r k h e i m the epistemologist took over a dichotomy between con-
ceptual f r a m e w o r k and incoming, u n i n t e r p r e t e d content. Thus, midway
t h r o u g h the I n t r o d u c t i o n to the Elementary Forms, Durkheim begins a discus-
sion o f the categories o f e x p e r i e n c e with the following remarks:
At the roots of all our judgments there are a certain number of essential ideas
which dominate all our intellectual life; they are what philosophers since Aristode
have called the categories of the understanding: ideas of time, space, class, number,
cause, substance, personality, etc . . . . [Thought] does not seem able to liberate itself
from them without destroying itself, for it seems that we cannot think of objects
that are not in time and space, which have no number, etc. Other ideas are contin-
gent and unsteady; we can conceive of their being unknown to a man, a society or
an epoch; but these o t h e r s . . , are like the framework of the intelligence (EF, z l -
22).
T h a t is, when we examine o u r experience, we find certain j u d g m e n t s and
concepts which admit n o possible e x c e p t i o n s - - f o r example, that "every al-
teration must have a cause." Since t h o u g h t cannot "liberate itself" from these
j u d g m e n t s and concepts without "destroying itself," they represent features
o f e x p e r i e n c e which could not be otherwise. F u r t h e r m o r e , we can admit no
possible exceptions either for ourselves o r for any fellow human. As he puts
it several pages later, "[the categories] are distinguished from all other
knowledge by their necessity and universality" (EF, ~6). g

6 Cf. Stephen P. Turner, "Durkheim as Methodologist: Part I--Realism, Teleology, and

Action," Philosophyof theSoda/Sc/ences a3 (December 1983): 426-5o; also,"Durkheim as Metho-
dologist: Part II---CoUcctive Forces, Causation, and Probability," Philosophyofthe SocialSciences
14 (March 1984): 51-72. Interestingly, Renouvier and Boutroux provided links not only to
Kant, but also to William James (cf. Allcock, Pragmatism and Sociology,xxv-xxvii). Extended
discussions of Durkhcim's philosophical sources will be found in Gcorges Davy, "~2mile Durk-
helm: l'homme," Revue de M~taphysique et de Mora/e 27 (1919): 181-98, esp. 184-88; and in
Lukes, 8ra//eDurkhe/m, esp. 44-72.
' Davy, "Emile Durkheim," 186.
s For example, Elementary Forms, 494; Sociology and Philosophy, 43-45; and The Division of
Labor in Society, translated by George Simpson (New York: The Free Press, 1964), 4oo.
9 I take Durkeim's claim for the strong necessity and universality of the categories to be his
most consistently maintained and most plausible view. However, it is not difficult to ~nd
388 J O U R N A L OF THE H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 24:3 JULY 1986
D u r k h e i m a p p a r e n t l y saw n o need to a r g u e f o r this picture o f experi-
ence as containing necessary and universal features. It is apparently meant
to follow f r o m reflection o n the character o f his own experience, but to
hold for beings f u n d a m e n t a l l y like himself. D u r k h e i m writes in a p h e n o m -
enological vein; the categories are "invested with an authority which we
could not set aside even if we would . . . . T h e y do not merely d e p e n d u p o n
us, r a t h e r they impose themselves u p o n us" (EF, ~6). How to account for
their necessity and universality then became a question o f central impor-
tance for D u r k h e i m .
With characteristic brevity he considers and rejects the answers supplied
by both "classical empiricism" a n d "apriorism." T h e first holds that the cate-
gories "are constructed and m a d e up o f bits and pieces, and that the individ-
ual is the artisan o f this construction" (EF, ~6). On this view, their peculiar
hold over us is d u e to a certain "practical usefulness" (EF, ~7)- D u r k h e i m
objects that in making the categories empirical and t h e r e f o r e contingent
constructions, the empiricist doctrine bypasses, r a t h e r than explains their
necessity a n d universality. Far f r o m being in a position to construct their
modal structure f o r ourselves, we find that all o f o u r experience is con-
strained by a n d presupposes it. Thus, empiricism cannot account for what
D u r k h e i m calls o u r "surprising prerogative," namely, "that we can see cer-
tain relations in things which the examination o f these things cannot reveal
to us" (EF, ~7)- T h a t is, e x p e r i e n c e can teach us that every alteration has a
cause, but not that the r e l a d o n is one o f necessity. T h e r e f o r e , the origin o f
this necessity must lie elsewhere than in experience.
Given his rejection o f empiricism, one might expect D u r k h e i m to be
sympathetic to apriorism, the doctrine that "the categories cannot be derived
from e x p e r i e n c e [since] they are logically prior to and condition it." And in
fact he does observe that, in admitting this much, the appriorist account is
superior. H e considers two versions o f it. T h e first errs in making the cate-

passages in the E/ementaryForms in which these necessary and universal categories of thought
are said, for example, to "vary incessantly" from place to place, and time to time (e.g., EF, 28).
The idea of such categorial change--probably due to the influence of Renouvier--has been
rightly criticized by Talcott Parsons as not only incompatible with Durkheim's "stronger" view,
but as amounting to a self-refuting epistemological relativism. But whereas I see a glaring
inconsistency, Parsons finds an "inextricable philosophical difficult[y]" (The Structure of Social
Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers, vol. I
[New York: The Free Press, 1968], 447). I doubt whether the matter is resolvable through
exegesis. As with other central doctrines of Durkheim's, there is no single, tidy "theory of the
categories" in the E/ementa.) FomLs. I am reconstructing its central epistemological train of
thought, that which is most philosophically important. Mine is not the only possible reconstruc-
tion; the book is too raw and too rambling for that.
 EPISTEMOLOGY IN DURKHEIM 389
gories "immanent in the nature of the human mind by virtue of its inborn
constitution" (EF, 26). Durkheim contends that this is merely to restate and
not to resolve the problem, since one could as well ask how we came to have
this subjective constitution and not some other.
A second apriorist explanation of the necessity and universality of the
categories, that of "saying that only on this condition is experience itself
possible changes the problem perhaps, but does not answer it. For the real
question is to know how it comes that experience is not sufficient to itself,
but presupposes certain conditions which are external and prior to it, and
how it happens that these conditions are realized at the moment and in the
manner that is desirable."
Durkheim complains that this, the Kantian or "transcendental" strategy,
lacks "all experimental control; thus it does not satisfy the conditions de-
manded of a scientific hypothesis" (EF, ~7). A scientific hypothesis would
specify "conditions which are external and prior" to experience, and which
confer on the categories their necessary and universal status. Durkheim here
voices the standard complaint that, in refusing to consider determining con-
ditions antecedent to the spontaneity of thought itself, the transcendental
point of view remains "suspended from nothing in heaven and supported by
nothing on earth. '"~ Even admitting the transcedental strategy, the question
recurs why our experience should have just these and not some other set of
necessary and universal features.
The details of these criticisms, as well as the picture of experience as
containing necessary and universal elements, remain, in Durkheim's hands,
rather murky. He apparently felt that he had given them enough philo-
sophical content to enable his audience to evaluate his argument, and in that
he may have been right. But whatever the individual merits of these criti-
cisms, when taken together they are clearly incompatible. According to
Durkheim, empiricism fails because it falsely represents us as having the
ability to stand outside the categories in constructing their necessary and
universal structure from the successes and failures of everyday life. On the
other hand, apriorism refuses to identify antecedent determinants of the
categories' modal structure, and so offers no explanation at all. But how can
we seek these antecedent causal conditions except as part of--on Durkheim's
own terms--a futile attempt to adopt a standpoint outside of (antecedent to)
our own categorial constraints?
So this was Durkheim's dilemma: if he was to escape both the errors of

~~ LewisWhite Beck, Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1978),3o
ff.
39 ~ J O U R N A L OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 2 4 : 3 J U L Y 1986

empiricism and aphorism, he had somehow to construe antecedent causes o f

the necessary and universal features o f experience, and to construe them in
such a way that they did not negate the very necessity and universality that
he sought to explain. He interpreted the latter requirement to rule out any
explanation o f the categories' necessity and universality which made it a
historical process. A n d adopting this a-historical stance left him with no
alternative, so he thought, except to assign causal efficacy to something
without conceding it spatio-temporal location.
We can u n d e r s t a n d Durkheim's doctrine that society is an ideal entity as a
response to these epistemological pressures. In contending that such con-
cepts as time, space, class, n u m b e r , cause, and substance reflect the earliest
forms o f social organization, Durkheim had already committed himself to
the categories' social, t h o u g h not ideal origin?' He turned to idealism as a
way o f overcoming what he preceived as the empiricist-apriorist deadlock.
We can only u n d e r s t a n d the categories' necessity and universality, Durkheim
insists, when we realize that
society could not abandon the categories to the free choice of the individual without
abandoning itself. If it is to live there is [need of a] minimum of logical conformity
beyond which it cannot safely go. For this reason it uses all its authority upon its
members to forestall such dissidences. Does a mind ostensibly free itself from these
forms of thought? It is no longer considered a human mind in the full sense of the
word, and is treated accordingly. That is why we feel that we are no longer com-
pletely free and that something resists, both within and outside ourselves, when we
attempt to rid ourselves of these fundamental notions, even in our own conscience
(EF, 50).
This is Durkheim's a t t e m p t e d middle way between empiricism and apri-
orism. As the unscientific apriorists cannot, he can point to the antecedent
cause o f our categorial framework, namely, society acting to insure its own
survival. Unlike the hubristic empiricists, he seeks to represent its genesis as
timeless, and so as i n d e p e n d e n t of a constructing agent. Durkheim's is an

,i The thesis that the classification of things (categories) reproduces the classification of
men (social organization) is generally regarded as a central theoretical contribution to the
sociology of knowledge, and continues to find defenders and to spawn research programs. For
example, Durkheim held that space is conceived in the form of an immense circle by some
societies in Australia because their camp has a circular form. Again, the North American Zuni
divide their pueblo into seven quarters, each representing a particular clan. He concludes,
"Thus spatial organization is modeled after social organization and is a reproduction of it" (EF,
24-25). For a recent defense and application, see David Bloor, "Durkheim and Mauss Revis-
ited: Classification and the Sociology of Knowledge" in Nico Stehr and Volker Meja, eds.,
Sociology and Knowledge: Contemporary Perspecth, es on the Sociology of Knowledge (New Brunswick:
Transaction Books, 1984), 5 a-76; reprinted with revisions from Studies in History and Philosophy
of Sdence l~/4 (]982): ~'67-97. I shall cite the revised version. Durkheim first published his
central thesis in a monograph written a decade earlier with Marcel Mauss, P~nitive Classification.
 EPISTEMOLOGY IN D U R K H E I M 391
a r g u m e n t to the best explanation: in o r d e r to account for the necessity a n d
universality o f the categories, we are forced to a d m i t s o c i e t y - - a n ideal entity
capable o f i m p o s i n g its r e q u i r e m e n t s u p o n its m e m b e r s - - i n t o o u r ontol-
ogy. TM " T h u s , " he concludes, " t h e r e is a r e a l m o f n a t u r e where the f o r m u l a
o f idealism applies almost to the letter: that is the social realm" (EF, ~6o). 's
I want to m a k e the transition f r o m i n t e r p r e t a t i o n (section 1) to correction
(section 3) by considering two o f the most w i d e s p r e a d and influential criti-
cisms o f D u r k h e i m ' s sociological idealism? ~ By recognizing their shortcom-
ings we can see what is f u n d a m e n t a l l y right a n d w r o n g with D u r k h e i m ' s line
of argument.

2.

I n o n e o f the m o s t obvious broadsides, Talcott Parsons pointed out that no

object without s p a t i o - t e m p o r a l location can p r o d u c e an effect in the spatio-
t e m p o r a l world, a n d thus can c a r r y no e x p l a n a t o r y weight. In Parsons'
words: " t h e effect o f identifying society with the world o f eternal objects is to
eliminate the creative e l e m e n t o f action altogether. T h e i r defining character-
istic is that n e i t h e r the categories o f time n o r space apply to them. T h e y
'exist' only 'in the m i n d . ' Such entities c a n n o t be the object o f an e x p l a n a t o r y
science at all. For an e x p l a n a t o r y science m u s t be c o n c e r n e d with events, and
events do not o c c u r in the w o r l d o f eternal objects. D u r k h e i m ' s sociology in
so f a r as it takes this direction, becomes, as Richard puts it, a 'work o f p u r e
interpretation'."5
A f t e r h a v i n g r e m o v e d society f r o m the natural world, D u r k h e i m cannot
t h e n a p p e a l to it in o r d e r to explain a n y t h i n g in the world, including the
categorial s t r u c t u r e o f the m i n d .
Parsons a n d others have g o n e on to p r o p o s e an empirical r e d e p l o y m e n t .
T h e y a r g u e that a sociological epistemology n e e d not appeal to shadowy

" That is, for Durkheim, the hypothesis that the categories have a social (ideal) origin
enjoyed greater expanatory scope and power, was more plausible and less ad hoc, and was
disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same
subject. C. Behan McCullagh discusses the logical structure of arguments to the best explana-
tion in, Justifying Historical Descriptions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 15--44.
~ Durkheim's idealism amounts not to the claim that the existence of objects in space is
imaginary or even doubtful, but rather to the thesis that there exists a specificallysocial reality
beyond what appears to common sense and ordinary sense experience.
'~ I refer here to two of the main theoretical objections. Durkheim's argument has been
variously criticized on methodological and empirical grounds, but these dispute portions of
Durkheim's argument irrelevant for my purposes. Useful catalogs of these criticisms are con-
mined in Stephen Lukes, l~mile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study (New
York: Penguin, 1973), 497-529; Needham, "Introduction" to Durkheim and Mauss' Primitive
C l ~ , xxi-xxix; and Bloor, "Durkheim and Mauss Revisited," 51-52.
~5 Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, 445. Parson's reference is to Gaston Richard, La
sociologie g~,g,ral (Paris: Octave Doin et Fils, 1912), 44-52, and 362-7 o.
39a J O U R N A L OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 24". 3 J U L Y 1986
objects existing outside the spado-temporal world, but is free to trace the
origin of any particular concept to a concrete historical cause. Thus, it is no
coincidence that Robert Boyle and friends' "personal fortunes were deeply
involved in the quest for stable social forms," and that they should propound
a physics of inanimate matter. Similarly, there is more than an accidental
connection between the need, on the part of Newton and his followers, to
justify the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and their insistence on the passivity
of matter. Echoing Durkheim's fundamental insight, David Bloor comments
on these examples as follows: "The political context was used to construct
different pictures of the physical world . . . . The effect in each case was to
ensure that the classification o f things reproduced the classifications of
men." The suggestion is that we can then think of the sum of these concrete
causes as "society." With this line of defense we limit our investigation to the
world of ordinary sense experience, and so bypass the admitted force of
Parsons' criticism. ~6
The trouble with this strategy is that it also bypasses the object of Durk-
helm's investigations. Durkheim sought to explain not those concepts which
we are free to construct for ourselves, but the universality and necessity of
just those concepts which cannot fail to characterize human experience. In
assigning them contingent, empirical causes we bypass the very universality
and necessity which had set them apart for investigation.
So while Parsons' criticism is well-taken, his constructive proposal lacks
Durkheim's depth of insight into the problem. Durkheim saw, as Parsons did
not, that no causal (sociological) explanation could account for the necessity
and universality of the categories, for the fact that "thought is impossible
outside of them." He recognized that we cannot understand the peculiar
necessity and universality of our conceptual framework so long as we view it
as an effect caused by something in the spatio-temporal world. This recogni-
tion provided Durkheim's sociological idealism with a powerful philosophical
motive. Parsons has not been alone in failing to appreciate its force. '7

,6 For Parsons, ibid, 446; for Bloor, "Durkheim and Mauss Revisited," 63-66. For cogent
criticism of Bloor's analysis of the Boyle/Newton example, see Joseph Wayne Smith, "Primitive
Classification and the Sociology of Knowledge: A Response to Bloor," Stnd/es /n H/story and
Philosophy of Science 15/13 (1984): 94x.
,7 For example, Edward L. Schaub complains that when Durkheim "find[s] it hopeless to
account for the more developed mental phenomena [through empirical means], he resorts to a
further quasi-chemical process of fusion by which individual consciousnesses are said to unite
into a different psychical reality called society. . . . [But] is there empirical evidence of any
collective mind such as that which Durkheim's a ~ method leads him to accept?" ("A Socio-
logical Theory of Knowledge," The PhilosophicalRev/ew 09/3 [May 19oo]:335). Yes. The evidence
is the modal structure of the categories, a structure which admits of no empirical explanation.
For a similar complaint, see William R. Dennes, "The Methods and Presuppositions of Group
Psychology," University of California Publications in Philosophy 6 (1904):55-56.
 E P I S T E M O L O G Y IN D U R K H E I M 393

On the other hand, Durkheim failed to see (or was unwilling to admit)
that any investigation which takes the necessary and universal status of the
categories as its object cannot be "scientific" in the only sense he recognized;
that is, it cannot seek to identify their antecedent causal determinants. For
he wrongly saw idealism as an alternative to empiricism which would yet
allow him to speak meaningfully of antecedent causal conditions. But the
investigation cannot be scientific in this sense, because, as Parsons points out,
a commitment to locating the cause of any of our concepts must, if it is to
make sense at all, be a commitment to its historical determination. And that
approach, as Durkheim did realize (at least on occasion), cannot address,
much less explain, their necessity and universality.
T h e idea that society, ideal or otherwise, could be the cause of the catego-
ries' necessity and universality has also been attacked for presupposing an
agent able to recognize--that is, to use--the very concepts he is supposed to
receive. An early commentator, William R. Dennes, put this second criticism
with some force: "It is ridiculous to say that the categories of the mind are in
any sense transferences from social organization. The categories of quantity
would have to exist and to operate in order that an individual mind should
ever recognize the one, the many, and the whole, of the divisions of his
social group." And Dennes' assessment has been recently endorsed by
Rodney Needham: "It is absurd to say that the categories originate in social
organization: the notion of space has first to exist before social groups can
be perceived to exhibit in their disposition any spatial relations which may
then be applied to the universe. '''s
Though their meaning is not entirely transparent, I take Dennes, Need-

18 William R. Dennes, "Methods and Presuppositions of Group Psychology," 39; Needham,

"Introduction,' xxvii. This criticism has been raised by every generation of commentators. Thus,
in one of the first American philosophical assessments of Durkheim's theory, Schaub writes that,
"as a matter of fact, the ~social] categories of Durkheim's descriptions really presuppose the
categories. Take, for example, his description of the category of space. Its initial manifestation is
said to be an arrangement of things valid for all members of the group and based on absolute
demarcations according to sympathetic values accruing to them through association with divisions
within the group. Obviously this rests on the fact that individual experience is itself characterized
by spatiality" CA Sociological Theory of Knowledge," 336-37). And David Bloor is of the view
that "the individual mind is capable of drawing rudimentary distinctions in the flux of experi-
ence; it can detect resemblances; it possesses a sense of spatial and temporal orientation; and it
can develop expectations which prefigure theories of cause and effect. This m u c h . . , is indeed
presupposed by social life and cannot be explained by it" CDurkheim and Mauss Revisited," 69;
but, see below, note 2o). Finally, Anthony Giddens thinks that "Durkheim's attempt to 'sodolo-
gize' Kant as such is plainly deficient . . . . A Kantian could simply reply that the recognition of
social time or social space already presupposes the discriminations which it purports to explain;
one could not grasp concepts of time and space without possessing the faculty of organizing one's
experience in these terms" (Anthony Giddens, s Durkhe/m [New York: Penguin Books, ~978],
1 ~1). I take up the Kantian point of view in the remaining sections.
394 J O U R N A L OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 2 4 : 3 J U L Y i986
ham and others to be reasoning as follows. In order to make sense of Durk-
heim's theory we must be able to imagine a member of some primitive
society going about his daily routine---trapping wild boar, seeking shelter,
etc.--without him possessing those categories the origin of which the theory
purports to explain. For if it makes no sense to speak of anyone ever being
without these categories, then it of course makes no sense to speak of their
acquisition. Now the results of this litde thought experiment do seem to
come out squarely against Durkheim; whether for us or the primitive, it is
nonsensical to speak of wild boars and shelters except as objects having
locations in space and time, capable of causal interaction with other objects,
and so on.
Because the object o f Durkheim's theory is the origin of the categories in
primitive society, it is natural to couch the present objection to it in the third
person: anyone back then must have already been able to use the category of,
say, plurality in order to be in a position to acquire it from society. Following
Durkheim himself, his critics have uniformly adopted this third-person per-
spective. Dennes talks about "the individual" and "his social group," and
Stephen Lukes, making the same point, writes that "the aboriginal must have
the concept of class in order even to recognize the classifications of his
society, let alone extend them to the universe. ''19
But as any parent can testify, this is quite false. We can speak of anyone
learning to make, for example, causal judgments, provided we catch him or
her at an early enough age. Provided we take the child as an object interact-
ing with other objects in the world, we can perfectly well identify a time
during which he or she might come to acquire any of Durkheim's categories.
So contrary to this line o f criticism, Durkheim can quite well speak of the
acquisition of necessary and universal categories, whether from society or
elsewhere? ~
~9 Lukes, l~raile Durkheim, 447- For other examples of the third person perspective, see
above, note 18.
"~ I have found this point in just a single commentator, an early American reviewer, A. A.
Goldenweiser. But far from defending Durkheim from the charge of circularity, Goldenweiser
criticizes Durkheim for ignoring the profusion of non-social, empirical sources of the catego-
ries: "It is well to remember that the origin of categories is an eternally recurring event;
categories come into being within the mental world of every single individual. We may thus
observe that the categories of space, time, force, causality, arise in the mind of the-child far
ahead of any possible influence from their adult surroundings by way of conscious or even
deliberate suggestion" ("]~mile Durkheim--Les Formes ~lkraentaires de la vie religieuse. Le syst~ne
tot~nique en Auatralie. 1912," in W. S. F. Pickering, ed-, Durkheim on Religion: A Selection oj
Readings with Bibliographies and Introductory Remarks [Boston: Roudedge and Kegan Paul, t975],
224-25; reprinted from the American Anthropologist, t 7 11915]: 719-35). True enough, but, as
for Schaub, this is to miss the philosophical point (see, above, note 17). So far as I know, Bloor
alone defends Durkheim from the charge of circularity, CDurkheim and Mauss Revisited," 67-
69). But he backslides in his "Reply to J. w. Smith," Studies in History Philosophy of Science
 EPISTEMOLOGY IN DURKHEIM 395
Unfortunately, Durkheim cannot avail himself of this defense, however
convenient it may be. If the idea of concept-acquisition can be given sense
only from within an empirical context, then, as we saw in discussing Parson's
criticism, Durkheim's entire project is misdirected. For if the investigation is
empirical after all, then, as Durkheim himself (sometimes) realized, it by-
passes its intended object, namely, the origin of the categories' necessity and
universality. Viewed in this light, the scholarly dialogue assumes a somewhat
farcical complexion. Durkheim's cridcs wrongly dispute something in which
Durkheim cannot, in any event, allow himself to be interested, namely, the
empirical acquisition of the categories. '1
Yet Durkheim and company do have the categories' necessity and univer-
sality in view, if not in focus. We are unable to picture any human being--
primitive or not--locating himself in a world in which space is not three-
dimensional, and time other than uni-directional. But in putting this point in
the third person both Durkheim and his antagonists involve themselves in a
subtle misrepresentation. While they make out that their observations are
about what is and is not possible for another person, their conclusions are
rather determined by their own inability to picture themselves acquiring, for
example, the category of plurality without already possessing it. They rely
not upon ethnographic reports about the mental capabilities of so-called
primitive man, but upon what they know to be true of themselves, and then
project these same capabilities and constraints back onto their aboriginal
brothers.
There is of course neither point nor validity in alleging faulty methodol-
ogy. Quite the opposite: if we wish to address ourselves to the necessity and
universality of the categories at all, we must adopt this first-person perspec-
tive. The reason is that it is only when we speak o f our own experience that
we cannot admit exceptions to certain concepts and judgments which charac-
terize it. And it is just these concepts and judgments in which we are inter-
ested. Thus, Durkheim's detractors are right to take our inevitable reliance

15]3 (t984): a48. He thinks the charge arises from the "elementary blunder" of "confusing
properties of the individual with what is specifically social." According to Bloor, Durkheim uses
the term category to designate a "collective respresentation," while the critics wrongly take it to
refer to an individual capacity. Thus, Durkheim's theory is non-circular because it presupposes
a "collective," rather than an individual subject. While Bloor is right to defend Durkheim, I
cannot find this "collective" subject in the E/ementary Forms. Durkheim/s talking about individual
knowing subjects, and is asking how some of their concepts can be invested with a necessity and
universality lacking in others. Durkheim appeals to the idea of a collective representation in
order to explain something occurring at the level of the individual. His theory avoids circular-
ity--and philosophical point---simply because there is no problem in talking about someone e/se's
acquisition of necessary and universal concepts.
" Cf. Kant's "ludicrous spectacle" at A 58/B 83. Quotations from the Critique of Pure Reason
are from the Norman Kemp Smith translation, x9a 9.
396 JOURNAL O F T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y ~4:3 J U L Y 1986
on the categories as the clue to their universality and necessity, but only so
long as each maintains the stance of one who reflects on the character of his
or her own experience. For t h e r e / s a sense in which it is question-begging
for me to talk of my having acquired Durkheimian categories: it is question-
begging for me to talk of that exper/ence."
Lukes, one commentator who at times seems aware of this first-person
requirement, generalizes by saying that "we cannot postulate a hypothetical
situation in which individuals do not in general think by means of space,
time, class, person, cause and according to the rules of logic, since this is
what thinking/s. '''s T h o u g h I shall qualify it in the following section, Lukes'
remark does hint at the thought-dependent nature of our inquiry. It hints
that, quite apart from its idealist purport, Durkheim's argumentative strat-
egy is self-defeating. Durkheim's theory of the social origin of the categories
fails because it bypasses the very phenomenon it sought to investigate, their
necessity and universality. In order to give sense to the idea of concept-
acquisition--as he must do in order to avoid the charge of question-beg-
ging--Durkheim must adopt the third-person point of view. But in so doing
he turns his back on the very thing he was trying to understand.

Yet even as we reject Durkheim's sociological epistemology, a Durkheimian

element seems to return when we reflect on the inescapability of our cate-
gorial constraints and ask to whom they belong. T h e peculiar thing, the
point suggested by the quotation from Lukes, is that the very constraints
we represent ourselves as holding up for inspection are operative in our act
of self-examination. They are, in some sense, our possessions, but in a
sense which leaves them unobjectifiable and in this respect unlike the de-
tails of our personalities and personal histories towards which we can hope
to adopt a position o f experimental detachment. Durkheim was right at
least in this phenomenological sense: the categories are limitations not of
our own creation. Rather, we find ourselves bound by them. Prompted by
such considerations, we may be tempted to trace their coercive power to
ourselves, to ourselves considered as impersonal agents lacking spatio-tem-
poral location, but whose activities are nevertheless evident in the imposi-
tion of unavoidable constraints on our experience of the spatio-temporal
world, not Durkheimian society, but something sharing an important func-
tional property.
However, it is obvious that nothing is gained in the move from sociologi-

"' Thus, for the critics' objection to be valid, it has to assume a first-person orientation. But
t h e n o f course it isn't an objection to Durkheim's third-person perpective at all.
9s Lukes, ibid.
 EPISTEMOLOGY IN DURKHEIM 397
cal idealism to transcendental psychology. In either case, we have only the
illusion of explanation. Recalling Parsons, only something having a determi-
nate location in space and time can serve as the cause of an effect having the
same. Rather than turn to transcendental psychology, we do better to admit
the results of the previous section: that however we derive the necessity and
universality of certain of our categories of thought, our derivation cannot be
causal in nature. '4
But if the necessity and universality of the categories could not have been
determined by anything in or outside of the world, how are we to explain the
modal structure which each in fact has? I think this question represents the
philosophical high-water mark of the Elementary Forms, a level which Durk-
helm's own answer did not sustain. Indeed, it is easy to be sympathetic, for
what sense can w e give to the project of tracing the origin of the categories'
necessity and universality when it has been stripped of all causal connotation?
Whatever the details of our investigative procedure turn out to be, we
know from the last section that our object of study will come into view only
from a first-person perspective. Indeed, Lukes's comment intimates just
such a thought-dependent point of departure: "we cannot postulate a hypo-
thetical situation in which individuals do not in general think by means of
space, time, class, person, cause and according to the rules of logic, since this
is what thinking /s." If we take this first-person requirement seriously, we
will have to begin with the categories, observe what ordering influence they
have on the world of our experience, and infer their modal structure indi-
rectly, "backwards" so to speak. Stealth is forced upon us; since we cannot
make the categories themselves into objects of inspection without making use
of them, we can only use objects of possible experience as informants.
Whatever its eventual usefulness, Lukes's remark about the nature of
thought will require two major emendations. First, the remark is false as it
stands, for we can easily conceive of beings whose thought and experience is
constrained in ways very different from our own. For example, we do not
contradict ourselves in conceiving of beings who make their escape through
a fourth spatial dimension, or who work in the twentieth century and vaca-
tion i n ' t h e fourth. T h e impossibility arises only when we try to picture
ourselves tagging along. Second, Lukes's observation, true or false, misses
the point at hand. Whereas Lukes is (purportedly) telling us something
about the nature of thought, we need a way of characterizing the relation
between our necessary and universal categories of thought and the work/
which, in turn, will illuminate the origin of that very modal structure.

See Manley Thompson, "Things in Themselves," Proceedings and Addresses of the A~L,,rican
Ph//oso~h/~ Assoc/ahon57/I (September 1983): 41-44.
398 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 2 4 : 3 JULY 1 9 8 6

It has recendy been pointed out that the problem in beginning our reflec-
tions with the nature of thought is how to coax objectivity out of a context
which "seems unavoidably merely subjective." Wridng of the truths o f logic,
Manley Thompson remarks that, "We show [their] objectivity not by showing
[them] to be true of a subject matter, but by showing the necessity of presup-
posing logical principles in any thought, whatever the subject matter. ''15
We may ask whether this strategy can help us extend the results of the
previous secdon. In the previous section we saw that we are unable to pic-
ture ourselves (or any fellow human) confronting a world which did not
contain objects having definite spatio-temporal location, and about which we
could not form judgments of, for example, quality, quantity, and relation.
Just as Durkheim came to appreciate that certain features of our experience
could not be otherwise, we can appreciate that these features thereby limit
the form of any of our possible experiences. We might then apply Thomp-
son's remark thusly: just as the objectivity of truths of logic are shown by
exhibiting them as presuppositions of any thought whatever, so the necessity
and universality of our fundamental categories of thought is shown by ex-
hibiting them as presuppositions of any experience whatever. Just as all our
thought (in order to be possibly thought by us) must conform to the princi-
ple of contradiction, so all objects (in order to be objects of possible experi-
ence) must conform to those conditions under which experience is possible.
In moving from thought to experience, we address the two problems with
Lukes's observation. That is, we both confine our conclusions to beings fun-
damentally like ourselves (beings who must receive impressions through
three spatial dimensions and one uni-directional temporal dimension, and
who must connect them into judgments of experience), and we bring the
world into the picture. In this first-person context, we get concepts which no
possible experience could help us acquire, and which no possible experience
could count against. We get the Kantian conception of apriority: necessary
and universal concepts, knowledge of which is independent of all experi-
ence. We get transcendental knowledge (A 56 = B 8x).
We can now recognize the futility of trying to appeal to something in the
natural world to explain something which, as Kant says, makes nature possi-
ble (B 16o). We can also recognize the wisdom in Durkheim's sociological
idealism: the Kantian epistemological subject, like Durkheimian society, is
not a further object in the world. Like Durkheimian society, it finds its own
content reflected in the world o f experience. And like Durkheimian society,
it is "collective" as opposed to "individual," for its properties are peculiar to
no one in particular, but characterize the spontaneity of human thought,

9s ManleyThompson. "On A Priori Truth," TheJournalof Philosophy78 0980: 477.

 EPISTEMOLOGY IN DURKHEIM 399

~erhatt#t. ~6 However, unlike Durkheimian society, the epistemological sub-

ject claims no shadowy existence outside the world, for its relation to the
world is not causal, but epistemic. That is, it neither causes nor is caused by
anything in the world of experience, but serves as a formal condition of its
possibility.

We may conclude that, while causal (sociological, historical) derivations can

be given for any of our neighbor's concepts, the situation is more complex
for those distinguished by a strict necessity and universality (those to which
we admit no possible exception). If history is a true story told about the
world of experience, then i n addition to having an historical point of origin,
our a priori concepts, to paraphrase Kant, make history possible. In justify-
ing the use of our a priori concepts as unavoidable presuppositions of any
experience capable of producing empirical knowledge, we do all that need
or can be done to trace the origin of their necessity and universality. We
trace it back to the possibility of experience.
This distinction between a causal and a justificatory account of our apri-
ori concepts surfaces, in the E/eme~zt~r~Forms, as the distinction between the
sociology of knowledge and epistemology. As the following passage makes
clear, Durkheim was quite capable o f making this distinction, though in the
end he could not maintain it. After making his central sociological point--
that the classification of things (categories) reproduces the classification of
men (social organization)--Durkheim poses the resulting epistemological
problem in an extremely vivid way: "But if the categories originally merely
translate social states, does it not follow that they can be applied to the rest
of nature only as metaphors? If they were made merely to express social
conditions, it seems as though they could not be extended to other realms
except in this sense. Thus in so far as they aid us in thinking of the physical
or biological world, they have only the value of artificial symbols, useful
practically perhaps, but having no connection with reality" (EF, 31).
,6 Durkheim does not follow Kant's fundamental distinction between receptivity and spon-
taneity, and so does not distinguish between space and time as forms of intuition and the pure
categories of the understanding. In speaking sweepingly of "the spontaneity of human
thought," I therefore sidestep the question internal to the Kantian philosophy--of how space
and time, as forms of receptivity, can be generated in the actual course of experience along with
the categories. Briefly, the analytical distinction between receptivity and spontaneity lapses in
what Kant refers to as the "figurative synthesis" (B x5o-52). For Kant, experience is a synthetic
product of a priori combination, having both intuitive and conceptual aspects. Kant writes, "it is
one and the same spontaneity, which in the one case, under the tide of imagination, and in the
other case, under the tide of understanding, brings combination into the manifold of intuition"
(B 161n). In other words, the combinatory functioning of our forms of intuition and pure
categories unite in the spontaneity of the figurative synthesis.
400 J O U R N A L OF THE H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 2 4 : 3 JULY 1986
D u r k h e i m is s u g g e s t i n g t h a t t h e sociology o f k n o w l e d g e , h o w e v e r success-
ful in its o w n right, raises a q u e s t i o n o f a d i f f e r e n t o r d e r . T h e sociology o f
k n o w l e d g e asks, b u t c a n n o t a n s w e r , h o w it is that wc are able to r e p r e s e n t
reality given t h a t o u r c e n t r a l categories h a v e a social origin. I f o u r f u n d a -
m e n t a l c a t e g o r i e s o f e x p e r i e n c e a r e f o r c e d u p o n us b y a n ideal entity, can-
n o t t h e y be a p p l i e d to t h e m a t e r i a l w o r l d "only as m e t a p h o r s ? " T h a t was
D u r k h e i m ' s e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l p r o b l e m in the E/ementa~j Forms. A r e c e n t gloss
o n Descartes' First Meditation c a p t u r e s D u r k h e i m ' s w o r r y as well: "All o f o u r
e x p e r i e n c e could b e j u s t the w a y it is n o w even if the e x t e r n a l w o r l d w e r e in
fact v e r y d i f f e r e n t f r o m t h e way we believe it to be. '''7 H o w d o we k n o w that
D u r k h e i m i a n society is a v e r a c i o u s G o d a n d n o t a genie malign?
A l t h o u g h D u r k h e i m was k e e n l y a w a r e o f t h e epistemological p r o b l e m
p r o d u c e d by his sociological t h e o r y , all his a t t e m p t e d solutions failed
badly. '8 I n t h e m o s t g e n e r a l sense, t h e y failed b e c a u s e D u r k h e i m c o u l d n o t
b r e a k o u t o f t h e t h i r d - p e r s o n , naturalistic (sociological) p o i n t o f view. F r o m
this p o i n t o f view the c a t e g o r i e s a r c objects in the world, w h o s e s t r u c t u r e is
e x p l a i n e d by a p p e a l to s o m e o t h e r object in the world, p e r h a p s society. O n
t h e o t h e r h a n d , the idea o f a n epistemic j u s t i f i c a t i o n - - l e g i t i m i z i n g o u r use o f
t h e c a t e g o r i e s as u n a v o i d a b l e p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s o f k n o w l e d g e - - m a k e s sense

17 Barry Stroud, "The Significance of Skepticism," in TranscendentalArgum~tts and Science:

Essays in Epistemology, Peter Bieri, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, and Lorenz Krfiger, eds., (Boston: D.
Reidet, 1979), 285. The radicality of Durkheim's epistemological task has often gone unrecogn-
ized. Thus, Schaub takes Durkheim to be arguing for the legitimate application of the catego-
ries to nature on the grounds that, "only through them has man been able to reach the thought
of a more or less stable order which is, on the one hand, the basis of corporate life and on the
other the object of communication and common thought," CA Sociological Theory of Knowl-
edge," 328). One the contrary, Durkheim's problem was m legitimize, in the face of skeptical
doubts engendered by his own sociological approach to knowledge, that contact with nature
which makes our corporate life and communication possible. Bloor also misses the force of
Durkheim's epistemological project: "The answer to [Durkheim'sl problem is that the social
message comprises one of the coherence conditions, while the negotiability of the network
provides the resources for reconciling those demands with the input of experience" CDurkheim
and Mauss Revisited," 67). The trouble with Bloor's suggestion may be grasped without ac-
quaintance with the "network model" of knowledge m which he adverts in this passage. For
Durkheim's problem was not how m give an account of knowledge which includes both soda]
and sensory components; rather, his problem was to show how we can be sure that, in B|oor's
phrase, "the input of experience" is really coming from the world (as it seems m be), and not
from something very different. Confusion on the part of the commentators is understandable,
as Durkheim himself was not always faithful to his original, and, I think, most philosophically
significant, formulation of the epistemological task. Writing of Pragraati~ and Sociology, Paul de
Gaudemar discusses shifts in Durkheim's conception of epistemology in "Sur la th6orie durkhei-
mienne de la connaissance, "Annales de 1,, Facu~ des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Toulouse (new
series) 4/2 (December t968): 71-8o.
9s The details are too well documented to bear repeating. See, for example, P. M. Worsley,
"Emile Durkheim's Theory of Knowledge" The Sociolog/~a/Remew4 (July 1956): 49-50; and,
Bloor, ibid, 66, and 74 n.47.
 E P I S T E M O L O G Y IN D U R K H E I M 4o~

only f r o m the point o f view of one who finds his or her own experience
constrained a priori, and asks how that constraint is possible. For Durkheim,
the idea o f an epistemic, as opposed to a causal, derivation of necessary and
universal features o f experience, was therefore unavailable. T h o u g h he was
able to articulate the subject matter o f each, he was unable to pursue the
distinction between a causal sociology of knowledge and a justificatory
epistemology. '9
T o s u m up: D u r k h e i m saw quite well the impossibility of giving a histori-
cal or sociological account o f necessary a n d universal features of experience.
This recognition is shown in his rejection of empiricism, in his contention
that we cannot construct for ourselves what in fact constrains any act of
construction whatever. However, his naturalistic standpoint left him with no
choice but to posit d e t e r m i n i n g antecedent causal conditions for our funda-
mental categories o f thought, albeit causal conditions o f an a-historical vari-
ety. Thus, the valid insight that we cannot appeal to any object in space and
time to explain the origin o f the necessity and universality of our conceptual
framework gave way to the error o f supposing that some gain could be had
by going outside the spatio-temporal world. Durkheim veered away f r o m the
insight that, when it comes to tracing the origin of the necessity and univer-
sality which marks certain o f o u r concepts and judgments, the task of expla-
nation is exhausted by that o f justification.
In attributing causal efficacy to a world transcending that of possible
experience, Durkheim's sociological idealism fails into what Kant called
"transcendental illusion." F r o m the Kantian point of view, society takes its
place alongside world, God, and soul as an empirically empty concept which,
nonetheless, resists dissolution even in the face of logical criticism. From the
Kantian point o f view, Durkheim's failed epistemology lends ironic confir-
mation to the second great contention o f the Elementary Forms:
At bottom, the concept of totality, of society, and of divinity are very likely only
different aspects of the same notion (EF, 49 ~ n.18). ~~

Hofstra University

,9 Others have noted this confusion, though not wholeheartedly. For example, Dominick
LaCapra seems to chide Durkheim for failing to raise the question "of the relationship between
epistemology and the sociology of knowledge," but goes on to express some doubt about
whether we can create "even a working division of labor" between them:/~m//eDurkheira: Sociolo-
gist and Philosopher (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 266-67. See also Gaston Richard
"L'Atheisme dogmatique en sociologie religieuse," Revue d'histoire et de philosophic reFtg4s,t~e
(1923): 195-37, 229-61; translated by Jacqueline Redding and W. S. F. Pickeringas, "Dogmatic
Atheism in the Sociologyof Religion," in Durkheira on Religion, 228-76.
s~ My thanks to Bruce Barton, Raymond Geuss, SallySedgwick,and ManleyThompson for
their criticisms and suggestions.