From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Sat May 21 2005 - 08:28:13 BST
Platt --
While researching suitable subjects for next week's Values Page, I ran
across a well-written article from the late '90s by a young French-Canadian
journalist. (You can review the complete article at
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/DIR010416.htm ).
What he has to say about Emile Durkheim seemed so relevant to our discussion
of collectivism in the MoQ that I decided to quote part of it as a
postscript to my last note.
_____________________________________________________________
Durkheim (1858-1917) is not well-known in the English-speaking world, but he
is a very big name in the French intellectual tradition, and no
self-respecting mainstream intellectual in the francophone world can ignore
him. His books on religion and suicide are still considered classics in
these fields.
His main contribution to contemporary thought, however, in line with his
predecessor Auguste Comte and many other French thinkers since, was to give
some semblance of scientific credibility to another collectivist approach in
the study of human beings. As Prowse writes: "Durkheim's great books are
dedicated to the proposition that society transcends the individual: that
our beliefs, values, dispositions and desires are often products of social
forces and structures we poorly understand."
Durkheim taught that society exists "outside" and "apart" from the
individuals who form it. Society is a "thing" in itself, and should be
studied as such. For example, all the beliefs, attitudes, imagery, etc.,
that make up culture and morality exist not only in the minds of
individuals, but as a "collective conscience" independent of them, just like
our mind is more than the physiological substrate on which it depends.
Society is thus an emergent entity. From Durkheim's perspective, morality
and culture, the collective phenomena par excellence, exist autonomously in
our social surrounding; they are imposed upon us, and individuals do not
have any discernable impact on them. What's important is to study the
collective phenomenon itself, and how each individual is well-adapted to it
or not (which would make him dysfunctional in society).
It is no surprise to find that Durkheim considered the theory of value to be
"the most fundamental of all economic theories," and was sharply
contemptuous of the subjective reformulation which had revolutionized
economics after 1871 (Kenneth H. Mackintosh, Journal of Libertarian Studies,
14:1). Durkheim's viewpoint is the exact antithesis of Austrian subjectivism
and methodological individualism.
Here is how Durkheim explains it:
"If we can say that in some sense collective representations exist outside
of individual consciences, it is because they derive not from individuals
taken one by one, but from their interaction, which is very different. No
doubt each one brings his own share in the elaboration of the common result;
but private sentiments become social only in combining under the pressure of
sui generis forces that this association develops. Following these
combinations and the mutual alterations that result from them, they become
something else. A chemical synthesis occurs which concentrates and unites
the synthesized elements and, by this very process, transforms them. Since
this synthesis is the work of the whole, its stage will also be the whole.
The resultant that comes out of it thus extends beyond each individual
spirit, just like the whole extends beyond the part. ... It's in this sense
that it is outside particular individuals. ... To really understand what it
is, we have to take into consideration the aggregate in its totality. It is
it that thinks, feels and wants, although it can only do this through
particular consciences. That is also how we can see that the phenomenon of
society is not dependent on the personal nature of individuals."
[Sociologie et Philosophie, Presses Universitaires de France, 1963, p.
35-36; translation by Martin Masse]
_______________________________________________________________
Am I totally off base here, or do you agree that Durkheim's collectivist
view bears some resemblance to the MoQ -- especially to Pirsig's
metaphorical Giant?
Essentially yours,
Ham
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