Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology Online

Extract

Émile Durkheim, often referred to as the founder of sociology, was born April 15, 1858 in Épinal, France. Appointed to the first professorship of sociology in the world, he worked tirelessly over three decades as a lecturer and writer to establish sociology as a distinct discipline with its own unique theoretical and methodological foundation. After an illustrious career, first in Bordeaux and then after 1902 in Paris at the Sorbonne, Durkheim died in November 1917, still a relatively young man, never having recovered from grief after most of the young sociologists he had trained, including his own son André, were killed in World War I.Durkheim's basic argument was that the human rational being is fundamentally a creation of social relations. His related arguments against all forms of individualism, and for a distinct sociological object and method, stand at the heart of sociology as a discipline. Motivated from the beginning by a recognition that the organization, rationality, and morality of modern societies are different from traditional belief-based social forms in fundamental ways, he argued that these differences pose serious challenges to contemporary society. He credited Rousseau and Montesquieu with inspiring his emphasis on the social origin of the individual, an emphasis he holds in common with other classical social thinkers (e.g., Comte, Marx, Weber, and Mead). The ... log in or subscribe to read full text