Asger Sørensen 1996

Ethics, moral science and sociology of morality.

(paper for ph.d.-seminar; unfinished)

Contents

I. Ethics - the exclusion of morality 2

A.Enlightment - Hume and Kant 2

B. Moore and analytical philosophy 3

C. Germany - ethics 3

D.The situation today - ethics 4

II. The naturalistic fallacy 5

III. From ethics to science of morality 5

A. Approaching sociology 6

B. From sociology to Durkheim 6

C. Philosophical ethics by means of sociology 7

D. The focus of my studies 8

IV. The critique of "the moralists" and their methodology 8

A. Against "the moral of perfection": The natural fallacy 9

B. Against utilitarianism: Inadequate theory and praxis 10

C. Against Kant: A mere play with words 11

D. The Ecole; neo-kantianism and positivism 12

E. Against the methodology of "the moralists" 13

V. From moralism and traditional morals to moral science 16

A. French moralism 16

B. Bonald's hard-core communitarianism 16

C. Comte and morality 18

D. The primacy of the practical in "moral science" 18

E. Approaching moral reality 20

F. Which science, which morality? 21

VI. Towards a scientifically operative definition of morality 23

A. The exterior sign of obligatory rules: Repression 24

B. The exterior symbol of obligatoryness: The sanction 25

C. Moral science and moral facts reconsidered 26

D. Too inclusive? The Law 29

E. Too exclusive? The morality beyond obligations 30

F. Too much! Goodbye, monsieur Durkheim! Or...? 32

G. The end of the story 33

1. Anomaly and moral health 33

2. Moral value of division of labour 35

VII. The determination of morality 36

VIII. Les formes 38

IX. What does Durkheim mean by morality and ethics? 38

X. What status has his claims? 38

XI. The nature of man 38

XII. Notes 39

I. Ethics - the exclusion of morality

Whereas political philosophy, loyal to its classification as pratical philosophy, has maintained its traditional links to the kind of knowledge today offered by the social and political sciences, ethics has made itself more and more independent and hence ignorant of the increasing amount of knowledge about those social interactions, which contains moral behavior. What ethics felt it necessary to know about moral behavior was given by common-sense in the form of those moral intutions, we allegedly all have.

Looking back on this development, what seems strange is that when it comes to theoretical matters, philosophers has been deeply suspicious about the reliablity of common-sense, whereas in practical matters precisely the same common-sense has been the basis on which they have buildt sometimes very impressing theoretical structures.

A.Enlightment - Hume and Kant

The ground for this development was laid in the Scottish enlightment by the supporters of the theory of moral sense and especially by David Hume. Hume made in the third book of his A Treatise of Human Nature from 1740 the observations which forms the basis of what the ethical tradition since has been pleased to call 'Hume's Law', that is that you cannot infer from how matters are to how they should be. This alleged 'law' however is a rather strong interpretation of Hume's recommendations to readers interrested in moral matters to be more "carefull" and "attentive".

Hume had noticed in his stduies of moralists that very often after long and elaborate acoounts of how God, man and morality, "suddenly" "in stead of the normal connections of words with 'is' or 'is not'" all the phrases he read was connected with "a 'ought' or 'ought not'". This change was gradual and inperceptual, but nevertheles, observed Hume, "very important". "Because 'ought' and 'ought not' express a new circumstance or proposition, and thus necessarily must be taken into consideration and explained." There must be given a reason as to why this new circumstance can be infered from the first "which is totally different from it". Hume advised readers to have this small observation in mind, because he was convinced that it "would overthrow all normal systems of moral and show that the difference between virtues and vices not is grounded in the state of things, and cannot be known through reason."⁽¹⁾

Of these two conclussions Immanuel Kant accepted the first, but not the second. He recognized the advice to be carefull about inferences from factual matters to matters about how things ought to be, in fact he actually reinforced it. Kant wanted his ethics "to be totally rinsed from everything that is only empirical and belongs to anthropology"⁽²⁾ but still thought reason could give us the answers.

B. Moore and analytical philosophy

After a period of various Hegelianisms and more or less anti-rationalistic responses to Kant, the decesive step for the course of modern ethics was taken by George Edward Moore in 1903 with the publication of his Principia Ethica⁽³⁾. By insisting even more strongly that one could not - should not - draw conclussion about what to do from statement about how the world is, he gave the ultimate legitimation to the arrogance with which ethics since then has treated whoever had something to say about how people behave here and now, how they behave in other places and cultures and how they have behaved up through history. What mattered in ethics after Moore's argument against 'the naturalistic fallacy' was intuitions about right and wrong and the meaning of the words used about moral matters; nothing else.

This is not because philosophy has been generally anti-scientific, quite the contrary. In theoretical philosophy the development of natural science since the time of Descartes has been integrated to a very large extent in epistemology. Scientist of various sorts has been allowed to cross the boundary and become philosophers, accepted as valid interlocuters within the established institutions, taken seriously at conferences and being invited to write in philosophical journals. Not all scientist however. The same process that made it legitimate to admit the natural sciences into the realm of truth meant, following theories demarcating this realm, gradually marginalizing most human and social sciences as unreliable in matters of truth.

The proces has been most clearly visible within analytical philosophy in the English-speaking world. It has so-to-say been most close the the ideal-type development described above.

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C. Germany - ethics

In Germany a parallel proces had the same result, making empirical knowledge "irrelevant" or even "explicitly" banning it from ethics.⁽⁴⁾ But whereas in England the moralist remained an important part of philosophy, in the German-speaking world ethics was neglected by the trendsetting intellectual traditions in most of this century. Neo-kantianism, positivism, marxism, phenemenology, hermeneutics etc., all have in common the admiration for - or envy of - the achievements of the natural sciences, and a low regard, or even despect, for individuals subjective - traditional - moral problems as to what one should do, and thus the task of philosophical ethics.

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D.The situation today - ethics

However the process was, the result has been that the institutions of anglo-saxon analytical philosophy (departments, associations, journals, acknowledged authorities etc.) today are dominating within ethics, just as analytical philosophy has the advantage having discussed many crucial questions in detail for years, and in a language, i.e. english, which today is the international language, also within the philosophical community. This means that analytical ethics more or less has earned the right of, if not setting the standards of ethics, then at least being heard in matters of ethics. To ignore it as a moral philosopher demands very good reasons.⁽⁵⁾ At the same time this asymmetrical situation means that they, on their side, has earned the right of just following the norms laid down by their own philosophical ideals, i.e. Kant, Hume and Moore, not having to acknowledge anybody else as ethical authorities. The attitude with which analytical philosophers meet philosophical inquiry is, as pointed out by Javier Muguerza, best characterized by their retorical question: "Analytical philosophy; could there be any other?"⁽⁶⁾.

So on the one side doing philosophical ethics, one is obliged to respond in some way to analytical arguments, classifications and distinctions, while on the other side, one can be, as many moral philosophers are, totally ignorant about the morality of real people and societies. One can even be ignorant of conceptions of morality and ethics within the philosophic tradition itself, and still be allowed to participate with equal weight in the discussions. Admission is gained by an interresting argument put forth, not by any knowledge about the moral matter discussed. Only knowledge about the non-moral factual aspects of the situation or the problem is sometimes required.⁽⁷⁾

Very few within ethics today would dream of suggesting, like Aristotle, that dicussing and even listening to these matters requires a certain knowledge about human beings, a certain life-experience or maturity.⁽⁸⁾ And certainly nobody would dare requiring systematic knowledge of human morality and ethics from realms of knowledge outside philosophy itself.⁽⁹⁾ Nevertheless, this is what I suggest, i.e. neither a return to the wise men of Antiquity and pre-modern times, like for instance that of Alisdair MacIntyre⁽¹⁰⁾, nor an appraisal of the disintegration of post-modernity like that of Richard Rorty⁽¹¹⁾, but an intent to integrate the knowledge about human beings obtained in this century, i.e. long after the formulation of the still dominating approaches to ethics. I have no doubts that ethics would indeed gain momentum if it allowed itself to be enriched by the knowledge about human morality obtain by the so-called empirical human and social sciences, and to this I would like to contribute.

However, to avoid misunderstandings one has to consider a systematic problem which has been basic to analytical philosophy: The relation between 'is' and 'ought'. So in spite of the appaling arrogance of analytical philophers - just as that of many other scientifically orientated schools within philosophy, like for instance, many phenemenologist - as philosophers we would do better to deal with Moore's argument of "the naturalistic fallacy", which in this context is of unquestionable relevance and importance; without being named as such, it has been a classic argument within moral thought since Antiquity.

II. The naturalistic fallacy

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III. From ethics to science of morality

This all means, as noted above, that ethics today to a very large extent is ignorant about the development of human sciences such as sociology, psychology and antropology.⁽¹²⁾ And if some philosophers have been shown some awareness of recent developments within the human sciences, it has only been integrated as common-sense knowledge, not as a contribution of science.⁽¹³⁾ Using concepts like for instance 'sub-consciousness' or 'structure' does not mean an integration of Freud or Levi-Strauss as scientist; these concept just happen to have been integrated in our, more or less common, common-sense knowledge.

And those few who has directly used results from human sciences have done it peace-meal, picking up a few usefull hints they happend to stumble over, neither caring about how the science in question was constituted as a body of knowledge held together by certain presuppositions, nor whether the science in question as a whole recognized the employed results as important contributions to this body of knowledge or just as curious historical or marginal findings.⁽¹⁴⁾ Whereas it is acknowledged that to participate in theoretical philosophy, one has to know something about natural sciences, in ethics one does not have to know anything about human beings and their behavior when living together and confronted with one and another.⁽¹⁵⁾

As moral philosophers turning to the human and social sciences for substantial knowledge about morality we thus have to take care not simply employing the first theory we happen to run into, as it often happens when non-philosophers turns to philosophy for the first time!! The first choice to be made, given the pratical limitations of any serious research, is to which science one should turn. Acknowledging that morality for sure is a social fact, and knowing that precisely this has not played a very important part in ethics - as the sociologist Salvador Giner says, a great part of ethics is simply "sociologically illiterate"⁽¹⁶⁾ - sociology seems a fair start.⁽¹⁷⁾

A. Approaching sociology

Turning to sociology one has to do what one can to avoid too blind-folded an amateurism. One has to get a general idea of what matters within this body of knowledge, and this means taking courses, listening to lectures and conferences, reading introductions and textbooks, chatting with sociologists etc.⁽¹⁸⁾ Being a philosopher does not mean that one can simply enter whatever science without learning the basics of the science in question; if one does that - as is often the case - the knowledge obtained might be taken for something else than it actually is.

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B. From sociology to Durkheim

Having got a general idea of what matters within sociology and who among the theoreticans are generally recognized as more important than others, two strategies seem reasonable: Starting with the classics or starting with the contemporaries.

Both strategies shows to be rewarding. Among our contemporaries, Zygmunt Bauman seems to be a good bet: Winner of The European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Theory in 1990 with the book Modernity and the Holocaust⁽¹⁹⁾, "the theorist of postmodernity"⁽²⁰⁾, that is, widely recognized by his colleges, Bauman not only questions the relationship between sociology as a discipline and morality; he also traces the logics of morality within modernity as such, and finally, in his Postmodern Ethics from 1993, steps over the line and makes normative claims as to what moral is and should be. Other possibilities within contemporary sociology are Niklas Luhman⁽²¹⁾ and Gilles Lipovetsky⁽²²⁾, all of whom I will return to later.⁽²³⁾

However, to get an understanding of how fundamental a role morality plays within the sociological tradition, we would do better first to take a look at the works of Émile Durkheim, who according to Bauman "virtually defined the meaning of the specifically sociological approach to the study of morality."⁽²⁴⁾ This recognition, however, leads Bauman to the most severe critique of what he takes to be Durkheim's approach, making it responsible for the bad state of sociology of morals.⁽²⁵⁾ And whoever is responsible for it, the sociology of morals is apparently in a bad shape. Lukes, for instance, finds that "the sociology of the moral is the great lagoon of contemporary social science"⁽²⁶⁾.

In general, my impression is that contemporary sociology does not think very much, or very well, of the approach of Durkheim. Luhman, for instance, even though having written the introduction to the German translation of Durkheim's doctoral thesis just the year before,⁽²⁷⁾ does not even mention Durkheim in his own "Soziologie der moral"⁽²⁸⁾, and it is not uncommon to meet remarks as the following in sociological texts: "The rebirth of historical sociology has to connect itself with the heritage from Marx, Toqueville and, in particular, Weber, in stead of the philosophical, apriorical and developmental schemes of Comte, Spencer, Tönnies or Durkheim."⁽²⁹⁾

However, there is no doubt as to the genuine interest Durkheim took in studying moral matters. It is manifest allready at the first page of his doctoral thesis, De la division du travail social; in fact the very first sentence is the following: "This book is above all an effort to treat the facts of moral life after the method of the positive sciences."⁽³⁰⁾ And this was by no means just a passing whim, but reflected a life-long dedication to the study of morality.⁽³¹⁾ Morality was "the center and the end of his work"⁽³²⁾, being "haunted"⁽³³⁾ from the time of his studies in stoic ethics at the Ecole normale superieure⁽³⁴⁾ up untill his very last writings, which precisely was the introduction to the book he more than anything else wanted to write: La morale.⁽³⁵⁾

C. Philosophical ethics by means of sociology

What is important to remember here from the start is that Durkheim's thesis was a philosophic thesis, that Durkheim was educated as a philosopher, and as such, inspired by the attempts in Germany and France to found a science of morality,⁽³⁶⁾ he chose to develop Comte's philosophical programme of sociology into a scientific discipline to serve him in his pursuit of philosophical goals. Durkheim newer ceased being a philosopher, not even after having succeded in establishing sociology as an recognized empirical science at the French universities. Durkheim's works are marked by his "repeated efforts to resolve philosophical problems by sociological means"⁽³⁷⁾, just as he all through his carrier taught philosophy, participated in philosophical confrences, contributed to philosophical journals, always preoccupied about how the experience of sociology could cast light on or even contribute to solving philosophical problems, and, above all those of ethics.⁽³⁸⁾

In fact, the sociologist George Gurvitch found that "in stead of working in the sociology of morals, or the science of manners, Durkheim pretended to deduce from sociology a moral philosophy based on metaphysically and dogmaticly putting on the same footing the supreme good, conscience collective and the soul, from which he was newer able to work himself loose"⁽³⁹⁾. Whether or not this in fact was the case, and whether or not Lukes is correct in qualifying Durkheim as a "bad philosopher"⁽⁴⁰⁾ I will leave to be considered later.⁽⁴¹⁾

That he was indeed thinking in a philosophical context becomes quite clear if one follows the argumentation in the Preface and Introduction of his thesis.⁽⁴²⁾ Not that the arguments against the particular ethical doctrines are very subtile or sophisticated, but the general arguments against the "sterility"⁽⁴³⁾ of the methodology employed by the moralist shows quite clearly that

Durkheim [...] is still sufficiently close to us that his problems might profitably be regarded as our problems as well, and we might learn from his solutions accordingly.⁽⁴⁴⁾

In fact, I would consider them still valid, and by following the whole line of argument we might get as an indication of a way to get from traditional philosophical ethics to something else, which nevertheless also must be ethics, but an ethics which to a much grater degree takes the facts of morality seriously.⁽⁴⁵⁾ And this is because Durkheim as a professionel philosopher, not only, like all human being both did and had his own moral experiences; he did indeed, as José A. Prades points out, also both did and had his own ethical experiences, i.e. both having the "experience of ethics as a scientific discipline" and doing the "experience to thematicize systematically concepts, principles, normes or values in a series of studies of ethical character"⁽⁴⁶⁾. And some of the conclussions Durkheim draws from these experiences are indeed still relevant to ethics, as I hope to show in what follows.

D. The focus of my studies

As mentioned above, Durkheim layed the ground for what has since becomed the orthodox sociological way of approaching matters of morality. This orthodoxy differs considerably from that of ethics, but both has survived, indicating that they have made sense to at least some reseachers into the world of morality, allthough embeded in different theoretical contexts. Durkheim, however, takes his departure in a confrontation with philosophical ethics and actually argues for why it is necessary to chose another approach than that of traditional ethics, i.e. why one has to pass from the one theoretical context to the other, and I have therefore chosen to present Durkheim's initial arguments in great detail.⁽⁴⁷⁾ This way it is possible, both to see the need for a change of course within ethics as concieved by Durkheim, and with which I agree, just as one can see those crucial steps in his argumentation which indicates why he eventually fails living up to both his own demands for a moral science and his philosophical goals. Together this may serve as an indication of how to continue the traditional philosophical, i.e. ethical, aspirations of Durkheim, making use of his scientific sociological approach, beyond what was actually achieved by Durkheim himself.

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IV. The critique of "the moralists" and their methodology

The aim of Durkheim's thesis was to evaluate morally the division of labour in society. The division of labour is recognized as a fact, not just of the development of society, as emphazized by the classical political economy, but of life in general. Refering to various scientist and philosophers, Durkheim takes for granted that the "division of social labour only presents a particular form of this general proces"⁽⁴⁸⁾, which means that the "the law of the division of labour applies just as well to organisms as to societies"⁽⁴⁹⁾. This fact to Durkheim raises the question whether it is our duty to become "perfect and complete being, sulf-sufficient in it self" or we rather should aim at becoming "a being which is only part of a whole, an organ of an organism?" The question which he poses to himself is hence whether the division of labour "being a law of nature" is also "a moral rule for the human conduct."⁽⁵⁰⁾

This being the goal of his research, Durkheim first has to consider the theories of morality allready available for such an evaluation,⁽⁵¹⁾ and this is what he does in the Preface and the Introduction. He admits that his treatment can only be incomplete: "The moral doctrines are too nomurous to make one certain not to have forgotten some."⁽⁵²⁾ So he choses three representative types of moral thinking, three types of "moralists", i.e. the philosophers working within ethics, and they happen to be those of the three still dominant ethcial approaches, aristotelic inspired ethics, Kantianism and utilitarianism.⁽⁵³⁾

A. Against "the moral of perfection": The natural fallacy

The ethics of perfection takes ones own personal perfection as a way to obtain morally worthy goals, but to Durkheim there is no way in which one can get from one's own perfection to that of the neighbour. Taking for granted natural human qualities as sympaty, family-feeling, patriotism, the ethics of perfection insists that they ought to be cultivated and perfected. But if duties can be derived from such considerations, they have nothing to do with the ones which links us to our fellow-beings, "for they consist in the obligations to serve the neighbour, and not in that of doing service to our personal perfection"⁽⁵⁴⁾.

Confronted with this argument the ethics of perfection has sought refugée in the idea of an "essential community", of internal bonds within the "civil society". This, however makes Durkheim respond, that however it may be with this "solidarity", however be its nature or origin "one can only pose it as a fact, and that is not sufficient to raise it to [a] duty."⁽⁵⁵⁾ One has to explain what it is that gives it "moral value", why this "solidarity with neighbours, ancesters, our past" is not just "a yoke" which we ought to get rid of, because the duty demands "complete emancipation"⁽⁵⁶⁾, which according to Durkheim was the doctrine of the Stoics.

This emancipation may indeed be impossible, and the solidarity of the community thus inevitable. But from this fact, Durkheim concludes, "it does not follow that it is moral." And what is more, even though it may very well be that the communitarian bonds means that "I participate in all what I do to others since [...] the others are also myself", still, I must be myself even more completely. There is no way one can avoid having to choose between oneself and the other, and "if my first duty is to be a person, I ought to reduce to a minimum everything which is impersonal in me"⁽⁵⁷⁾, i.e., for instance, moral obligation to others.

Durkheim thus find the ethics of moral perfection, which as developed by Durkheim's argument we today could consider a primitive kind of communitarianism, unacceptable for mainly one reason: There is no additional reasoning as to why the admittedly morally relevant fact of sympathy, family-feeling, solidarity etc. has moral value. This does not mean that he like Kant (and Moore) alltogether denounces ethical naturalism and intents prove the total irrelevancy of these empirical facts from the realm of ethics - quite the contrary, as we shall see - but it does imply that he accepts Hume's advise to be cautious and that the step from 'is' to 'ought' requires independent reasoning.⁽⁵⁸⁾

B. Against utilitarianism: Inadequate theory and praxis

Employing utility as the basic concept in ethics does nothing to clarify the matters of how one should act; as Durkheim says, "nothing is more obscure than questions of utility"⁽⁵⁹⁾. If it is a matter of individual interests, in complex situation the individual cannot overlook all the circumstances and conditions. To make it a feasible option, one has to have "a notion so perfectly adequate which in such matters is impossible."⁽⁶⁰⁾ No matter which standpoint one takes, something will allways be left over to presumptions and conjectures, which opens up to risks in the long run.⁽⁶¹⁾

Whatever be the practical problems, however, Durkheim finds it extremely unlikely that one should be able to base any kind of ethics at all solely on individual interest. A morality which takes individual interest as its basis can only be regarded as having "abandoned" morality alltogether: "Nothing comes from nothing; it would be a logical miracle if one could deduce altruism from egoism, love for society from self-love"⁽⁶²⁾.

Turning to the interest in societal utility, the practical obstacles, of course, grows. When one has to calculate the utility of an action in relation to society, it is no longer enough to include "consequences reletively close" in space and time, but results "in all directions of the social organism". This would require "capacities of accuracy and combination"⁽⁶³⁾ which only few could be expected to posess, or, expressed in another way, even if it was possible to make exact calculation, to keep all the elements together in "the attention of the conscience and in the order of the will, all the energy we dispose of is necessary, and this does not leave us anything to act on."⁽⁶⁴⁾

As pratical guidance in moral matters, hence, Durkheim does not find utilitarianism convincing. The same goes for the account of morality, the utilitarian perspective offer. Durkheim's argument follows, allthough implicitly, the classic philosophic necessary-sufficient structure of arguing: Using utility as the mark does not capture all the moral praxises, which even though they are of no obvious use, still are moral, like for instance our "cult of the deads"⁽⁶⁵⁾. And, as Durkheim reminds us, Herbert Spencer has questioned the utility of benevolence in relation to the wellfare of society. On the other hand, a great many things are usefull and even necessary to society, "which cannot be moral"⁽⁶⁶⁾, like, for instance, the army and the industri; that a country has the gratest number of canons or steam engines does not make its people "the most moral"⁽⁶⁷⁾.

For those moral rules which utility are best confirmed, like the rules which constitutes the family, one can "observe that the services they render could not be known in advance"⁽⁶⁸⁾; the constitution of the family cannot be seen as consciously brought about to, for instance, prevent suicides and crime. In general one can say that: "Whether the moral praxises are usefull or not to society, it is certain that most generally it was not with this goal in view that they were established"⁽⁶⁹⁾.

No matter how little complexity we ascribe to moral commandments, they have not been formed as a conscious response to societal interest; commandments may have been born by "estetical or religious aspirations, all kinds of passions, but without utilitarian objectives". Durkheim, however, admits that some of the most annoying and, hence, least usefull moral rules tend to disappear from society over time; but this "natural selection [...] does not create anything, does not add anything" with regard to moral rules. It cannot do a moral praxis usefull, which is not allready usefull. And, what is more, a lot of rules persists even though useless to society, "maintained as they are by the causes which they have evoked"⁽⁷⁰⁾.

The utilitarian ethics is too complicated as a practical guidance for accions and too simple as a theoretical acoount of morality. That was true in the days of Durkheim as it is now.⁽⁷¹⁾ But Durkheim was not denying the question of social interest and utility any relevancy whatsoever to the study of morality; all he was denying was that the moral rules were rationally created with this for eye, and hence should be seen as founded this way. Society would to some degree descard moral rules which were not functional to the society in question, but morality could not be reduced to this functionality alltogether.

C. Against Kant: A mere play with words

Kant did not satisfy Durkheim either. According to Kant we only act morally if we act in such a way that the maxime for our action can be universalized. Thus to Kant, egoism cannot be morally defended because we cannot apply it to all possible cases without contradicting ourselves, i.e. not in the cases where we need the help of others, and this means that charity must be a duty to all mankind. But, says Durkheim, the "so-called irrationality" of egoism can be relieved if we only renounce at our need to sometimes being helped ourselves. If we do not demand from others what we will not give them in return, egoism can be universalized. And if one contests that "on those conditions human scociety would be impossible", that would be to take in "considerations alien to the Kantian imperative"⁽⁷²⁾. No doubt, adds Durkheim, to be in accordance with oneself "one has to chose, once and for all, between the two conducts; but there is no reason to chose one more than the other."⁽⁷³⁾

Deriving charity from the other Kantian dictum, to treat human beings as ends in themselves, does not fare better. According to Kant this dictum means not only negatively respecting, but actively doing good, developing the other like oneself. But, says Durkheim, "the real charity, the one which consists in the gift of oneself, implies necessarily that I subordinate my person under an end which surpasses it"⁽⁷⁴⁾, i.e. the other. Hence, by "humiliating" and reducing myself to the sheer "role of means", I strip myself of moral value, and thus sin against the dutis to myself. By this type of acts people are caught in the paradox, that while on the on hand following the Kantian moral law, they on the other hand breaks it.⁽⁷⁵⁾

But, says Durkheim, without such acts, where people mutually give themselves to the other, life would be impossible. To Kant "the act of sacrifice by which the consents to be the instrument of pleasure for the other partner is in it self immoral" and only by a "similar and reciprocal sacrifice" can the "moral equilibrium"⁽⁷⁶⁾ be reestablished. To Durkheim, "nothing is more deplorable than the way in which Kant deduces the constitutive rules of marriage"⁽⁷⁷⁾, and the argumentation concerning charity boils down to a mere "play with concepts".⁽⁷⁸⁾

What obviously bothers Durkheim with Kant is his lack of understanding of relations between human beings, be that in one-sided charity or in the mutuality between equals, as in the marriage as understood by Durkheim. Allthough the critique of the ethics of Kant is rather half-harted and not as severe as in the previous cases - in fact it directs itself more to the thinker Kant and his general line of thought than his conclussions - it reflects very well the concerns of Durkheim in relation to ethics and morality, the importance of the facts of human morality in themselves, just as the hard boiled rationalist attitude, accepting the demand to chose "once and for all".

D. The Ecole; neo-kantianism and positivism

The not very convincing critique of Kant also reflects the fact that Durkheim was raised philosophically in an atmosphere dominated by neo-kantian philosophers, and especially by his teacher in philosophy at the Ecole normale superieure, Émile Boutroux, to whom he later dedicated his doctoral thesis with a "respectfull and acknowleding homage"⁽⁷⁹⁾. Boutroux insisted that philosophy "ought to be based on the sciences", being "in direct contact with the realities of nature and life"⁽⁸⁰⁾, and this reality was to be viewed as a hierachy of different, mutually relatively autonomuos orders, each one to be explained by principles proper to the order of reality in question.

Another decesive neokantian influence stemmed from the philosopher Charles Renouvier, today largely forgotten, but whose importance for French thinking in this epoke is "dificult to exagerate"⁽⁸¹⁾ Renouvier took a great interest in matters of morality and practical philosophy, "gloryfying burgois virtue"⁽⁸²⁾, and defending philosophically the view that kantian criticism meant precisely "the primacy of morality in the human spirit with respect to the possiblity to establish trancendental truths", subordinating "theoretical reason under practical reason"⁽⁸³⁾ He was very dedicated to etablish a scientific approach to the study of morality, insisted on the compability of natural determination and the freedom necessary for moral choice. Defending human dignity, authonomy and social justice, he was hence very critical of utilitarianism.

Worth mentioning, finally, is Durkheim's history teacher, Fustel de Coulanges, to whom he dedicated his doctoral thesis in latin about Montequieu.⁽⁸⁴⁾ Fustel insisted that history was a science which "like all sciences consisted in discovering the facts, analyzing them, comparing them and showing the relations between them"; those fact was to be sought for and found through "meticoulous observation of the texts"⁽⁸⁵⁾. As a teacher he communicated to his students an "intelectual ascetism", insisting that "rigour in the method was a moral duty"⁽⁸⁶⁾.

E. Against the methodology of "the moralists"

These influences helps explaining some of the courses Durkheim undertook in his studies later on,⁽⁸⁷⁾ and the general attitude towards traditional philosophical ethics in De la division du travail social. This attitude, however, I find quite reasonable, having done my own experinces with ethics the last years. I have at various occations found myself in the position of expressing a line of thought similar to one I have found in Durkheim's critique of "the moralists",⁽⁸⁸⁾ but have been meet with distrust as to the feasibility, and even the rationality of this approach. This is of course the reason why I have been very content to find the same way of thinking in the works of a recognized scientist, to whom being scientific was exactly being rational; "the two terms are [...simply...] synonyms"⁽⁸⁹⁾ I thus find his arguments still both relevant and valid, and this is why I want to initiate others to Durkheim's way of approching ethics, hoping that it may indeed lead to another way of doing normative ethics; if it was possible to percieve a hundred years ago the futility of traditional ethics, it must also be possible now.⁽⁹⁰⁾

The normal procedure used by moralists to judge whether or not a rule of conduct, like e.g. charity, has moral value is to confront it with an allready established "general formula of morality". Can the rule in question be deduced from the formula, it has moral value; if this is not the case, then it has no moral value. But, says Durkheim, this procedure would require that the formula given expressed "a undisputable scientific truth"⁽⁹¹⁾, accounting adequately for "all the facts where the moral nature is uncontested."⁽⁹²⁾ However, the sheer number of moralist with each their particular formula makes one suspicious if this is in fact a feasible possibility; at least untill now, no final formula has been presented, and, as we shall see, the way in which they procede "assures" that "they cannot be anything but subjective views and more or less approximate"⁽⁹³⁾

The inadequacy of the moralist approach becomes more clear when we in stead of general rules of conduct, demand an explanation of particular rules, like e.g. those which prohibits close relatives to marry.

The more the moral maximes are specialized and concrete, the more the relations they rule are determined, the more difficult it becomes to catch sight of the bonds which ties them to concepts that abstract.⁽⁹⁴⁾

Moralist tends to follow their own logic to the end, neglecting to integrate "the detail of moral life such as it manifest itself in the experience". Often they do not even consider the application of the abstract moral, considering the concrete moral as a degradation. They thus operate with "two ethics", one, ideal, true, but impossible; the other, possible, but only a way of organizing conventions, which they allready regard as "inferior and perverted".⁽⁹⁵⁾ This way they avoid accounting for inconvienient facts, means however that "institutions with uncontested moral value"⁽⁹⁶⁾ like marriage, family and ownership becomes regarded as inferior. By thus making the theory more in accordance with itself, the moralists tend to make it less in accordance with the facts of morality, which they then can reject as a decandence of the ideal moral.

They start reasoning as if the moral was entirely to create, as if they found themselves in the presence of a tabula rasa on which they to their taste could construct their system, as if what mattered was to find, not a law which resumed and explained a system of facts actually realized, but the principle of a moral legislation to be instituted entirely. From this point of view there is no need to distinguish between the schools. [...] They depart from a concept of man, deduce the ideal which seems to them suitable for a being thus defined, after which they make the obligation to realize this ideal the supreme rule of conduct, the moral law. The differences which distinquish the doctrines come exclusively from the fact that man is not always concieved of in the same way.⁽⁹⁷⁾

Some philosophers seems to prefer defining man in concepts of "pure will", "autonomy" or "solitude", while others put the weight on man's "sensibility" or his being "essentially social"; some cannot live without a law "which surpasses and dominate" them with an "imperative athority"⁽⁹⁸⁾, others are striken by the spontanous actions, which implies that only the stimulation of man's natural "desire"⁽⁹⁹⁾ is necessary.

All proceed in the same abstract way, passing very rapidly from facts to theory, and if they return to take a look at reality, they normally just take a very quick look at "the most general duties". What counts is not so much a real "verification" as to "illustrate by some examples the abstract proposition that one started by establishing". It is impossible to reach any "really objective conclussions" with such a method. The concept of man from which the moralists depart cannot be a product of scientific labour "methodologiocally conducted; for science is not a state to inform us on this point with precision." We have therefore every reason to suspect that the moralists only determine their concept of man to their "tastes of beliefs and personal aspirations"⁽¹⁰⁰⁾. However precise they conduct their deductions, the results can thus newer be anything but "conjectural"; a deduction is not in itself "a sufficient demonstration"⁽¹⁰¹⁾.

Most serious, however, is that all their "logical operations" rest on the postulate that "the only raison d'être of the moral is to assure the development of man" even though "there is no proof that this is in reality its role". Who says, asks Durkheim, that morality does not serve "ends exclusively social which the individual has to subordinate himself to?" Under all circumstances, to get an idea of "the general law of morality" is it necessary at least to know what is "the function of the moral", and to know that, we have to observe "the moral facts, [...] this multitude of particular rules which governs so efficiently the conduct"⁽¹⁰²⁾.

This critique of philosophic ethics is precisely to the point, and it been such a pleasure to find it expressed as sharply as does Durkheim. However, ethical theory does a lot to hide these basic facts, and a very reasonable reaction, when confronted for the first time with the theoretical world of ethics, is perplexity, not knowing what to think of it or who to believe.⁽¹⁰³⁾ I do indeed wonder why not more people express that reaction. Whether it is because they feel ashamed of not being able to understand what is going on, or they are looking for some quick religious answers, or they have some other good reason which I cannot see; the fact is that most of those few who continues doing ethics simply chose one of the dominant schools, make it their cause to contribute to this tradition, and accepts the esoteric character without questions.

Accepting Durkheim's critique, however, leads to the question of what to do next, and ackknowledging the characterization of philosophic ethics by Durkheim, I have found it quite natural to present how he nevertheless thinks it is possible to continue doing ethics, and inparticular normative ethics. Because, as noted above,⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ what Durkheim wants is to give an answer to a normative question, i.e. what the moral response to "the natural law" responsible for the division of labour ought to be. But before we proceed with the arguments of Durkheim, I have found it necessary to present some lines of thought in French social philosophy that are reflected in Durkheim's questions about the role of morality, i.e. whether it serves individual or social purposes. The teoretical conception of morality from which Durkheim departs is namely not quite the same as the dominating conception in English and German ethics.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾

V. From moralism and traditional morals to moral science

Together the three above mentioned modern influences from the time at the Ecole carried Durkheim a lot of the way towards, both the rigorous scientific discipline, so charateristic of his works, i.e. his insistance of close observation of facts and the importance of a clear methodology, and the way his criticizes philosophical ethics. His focus of interest, however, the area within which he applied his scientific work, i.e. morality, has to be understood on the background of French moralism, which generated the social thinking from which the sociology of Auguste Comte developed, and to whom Durkheim allways acknowlegded his debts.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾

And this shows to be important. Because the ackknowledgement of cultural and historical relativity concerning morality combined with an admiration of the achievements and the methodology of natural science, as manifested both in neo-kantian philosophy and the positivist approach to historical studies, has in other intellectual contexts led to the total dismissal of the possibility of establishing any kind of normatively valid ethics, as was the case with, for instance, the logical empiricist of the Wiena-circle and one of the other founding fathers of sociology, Max Weber.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾

A. French moralism

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B. Bonald's hard-core communitarianism

The conservative roots of sociology in an answer to the French revolution and the reformist line of thought from Claude Henri Saint-Simon over Comte to Durkheim are well known,⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ but to get an idea of the kind of conservatism generated by the experience of the revolution, it merrits to take a look at the works of one of Saint-Simon's contemporaries, Louis de Bonald, which was held held in high regard by the former,⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ and which can be seen as an anouncement of some central themes of French social discourse up untill Durkheim's intent to "liberate sociology from the nostalgia of the past".⁽¹¹⁰⁾

Bonald found it obvious that God at the beginning of humanity had given people their "maxims of faith and rules of conduct, the laws for their thought, the laws for their actions"⁽¹¹¹⁾. The moral and political truth was originally given by revelation, meaning that this truth was not be found but refound, not to be invented but conserved. Society, that is, the languange, opinions and institutions transmitted by tradition, were the gardiens of this revelation. The principles for conduct were thus not to be found inside man, but outside: "It is to the outside we have to direct our research, and the knowledge of ourselves is nothing but the knowledge of our relations with the neighbours, and of our duties to them."⁽¹¹²⁾

Bonald expressed quite clearly the the anti-enlightment leaning of his thinking: "The repression and the submission of reason by faith is the most efficient means to fix the spirit of all men; where it is most convenient for society, where it is necessary"⁽¹¹³⁾. The revolution had shown him how a mass of morally corrupted and intellectually sceptic people, by their desires could ruin what time and tradition had accumulated, regressing to "the savage state" of democracy, where "the strongest and most agile are the masters"⁽¹¹⁴⁾.

Faced with the social decadency of the Enlightment, which Bonald labeled "the century of egoism"⁽¹¹⁵⁾, his intention was to restore the traditional moral order of monarchical rule, which to him expressed a social structure of "subordination", that even though unequal also meant that each part would recieve the share, he deserved. The traditonal structure thus at the same time expressed "mutual help and reciprocity" and hence was to the "advantage of all".⁽¹¹⁶⁾ Bonald specially wanted the restoration of the traditional order because "everything there is social", be it "religion, power [or] distinction", expressing the superiority of society, of "the social will" over the individual. Society needed to return to the state, where society controled and inspired the individual through "the church, the state, military and religious orders, corporations, [and] familiy"⁽¹¹⁷⁾.

Criticizing the false dogmas of liberty and equality Bonald resumed his thought under the heading of a "philosophy of 'we'", which was not just "'me' repeated a thousand times", but a genuine holistic entity; in the world governed by "the social will" everybody would be totally integrated in the collective traditions, totally "delivered to the exigencies of society" because: "Since everything is done in the political society for the use of the subjects, they have nothing to do there."⁽¹¹⁸⁾ Hence, the individuals would not have to bother about thinking about how and what to decide, since society in all kinds of expression, be it action or thought, substituted every individual and collective subject belonging to society.

In no way would there be any room left to the individual creation of morality and ethics; "nothing of that which man invents is necessary to society, since society was there before the invention"⁽¹¹⁹⁾. Each generation would simply reasses the tradition transmitted by society, "the loyal and perpetual guardian of the sacred deposits of the fundamental truths"⁽¹²⁰⁾. Every 'I' would be absorbed in the 'we', meaning that all individual differences, apart from those functional in relations to the social division and organisation of labour, would be submerged into "the social unity and identity"⁽¹²¹⁾. But precisely these functional differences, which makes the individual a functionary of society, get their meaning only in relation to the function of the social whole.

Thus reduced to only an "organ" of the social body, man as such ceases to exist, just as does morality. The harmoniuos and equilibrious "social consensus" rest on "the absence of man", making, as Cingolani rightly observes, "impossible the meeting of man with man since in fact every ethical relation is only a relation between roles"⁽¹²²⁾. Man's "moral creativity" becomes the foremost sign of his being "guilty", and this guilt can only be atoned for by the subordination of man to the ethics of "God's chastisement"⁽¹²³⁾.

What is interesting however about the programme of Bonald, is that he, "anti-individualist" and the most ardous "adversary of democracy"⁽¹²⁴⁾, while wanting faith to subdue reason, still he does not se the integration of the individuals as the work of the religious functionairies of society; the programme of Bonald is a an argument directed to people allready liberated, an "intense demand to return to order, to voluntary servitude" after having "searched in vain a response to the non-sense of moral sufferance", and backed by the strong conviction that the guilt of "the original sin", of having been free had to be washed off by the "sacrifice of the self and the others."⁽¹²⁵⁾.

Bonald's conception of morality is refound in the sociological works of Le Play,⁽¹²⁶⁾ which were about the only empirical studies about societal matters available at the time Durkheim chose to develop the philosophical programme of Comte into a real scientific discipline with the name of sociology.⁽¹²⁷⁾ The intregration of traditional conservative moralism in the context of a modern enlightened discourse in the works of the two first mentioned is what is so charateristic of the moral sociological discourse of Comte and, allthough to a much lesser degree, Durkheim, where the balance finally shifts in favour of, first, the modern political ideals and, only later, the conception of morality as not only given and repressive, but also desireable and continuosly created as such by human collectivity.⁽¹²⁸⁾

C. Comte and morality

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D. The primacy of the practical in "moral science"

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Moral science regards the moral facts as "phenomenas" like other phenomenas, being "rules of action" with certain specific characteristicas. It must then be possible to observe, describe and classify morals, just as it must be possible to "search for the laws which explains it"⁽¹²⁹⁾.

It is [...] necessary to begin by instituting a whole science which, after having classified the moral phenomenas, researches into the conditions whereupon depends every type thus formed and thereby determines their role, that is, a positive science of morals [...] purely speculative and autonomous⁽¹³⁰⁾.

Whatever is the essence of morality this moral science is still relevant; "solidarity [...] may well be the source of morality"⁽¹³¹⁾, but even if "the source of morals consist in something given a priori", then the trouble hitherto to define it gives us reason to believe that this "initial germ of morality"⁽¹³²⁾, if it does exist, is indeed "confused and hidden". Whereever the "formula" of morality is to be sought, "be it inside us or outside us, one can only reach it by departing from facts in which it incarnates itself and which alone manifests it"⁽¹³³⁾. Nevertheless, it may still be the case that morals has some "trancendental goal which experience cannot reach", but this is better left to the "metaphycians"⁽¹³⁴⁾.

It is far from the case that "the particular rules" are only "corolaries of more general precepts without any existance of their own". They do not draw their authority from "more elevated maximes", but "oblige at any moment the will, directly and without intermediary". To know what to do, we have no need to recur to the application of principles to particular cases. In each case "defined and specialized ways of acting" simply imposes themselves upon us. "Is it so that when we feel an instinctive repulsion towrds incest, we thereby discover reasons which the wise have not discovered yet?" No. To know what to do in a given situation there is no need to "deduce from the general notion of paternity the peculiar duties which it implies"⁽¹³⁵⁾

Here, as in other cases, what exists is the particular and the individual, and the general is nothing but schematique expression⁽¹³⁶⁾.

However, during his critique of the moralists Durkheim returns in a foodnote to Paul Janet, initially criticized as responsible for the ethics of perfection,⁽¹³⁷⁾ to ackknowledge an idea of his as "important". The "innovation" is that Janet as to Durkheim's knowledge "the only French moralist" has proposed "to place the moral that one so improperly calls practical before the one named theoretical".⁽¹³⁸⁾ Hence, to Durkheim the reason to study morality has to be practical: his research would by his own account not merrit any "pains" if it only reflected a "speculative interest". The seperation of "theoretical problems from practical problems" and the focus on the former, does not mean a neglect of the latter; "on the contrary, it is to put us in a position to solve them better."⁽¹³⁹⁾

The will to treat the facts of morality by the methods of the positive sciences⁽¹⁴⁰⁾ does not mean substituting some "a priori principle" by "some propositions"⁽¹⁴¹⁾ derived from sciences like biology, psychology or sociology, making this the guarantee of the scientificability of the deduction.

This is not the method we have made it our purpose to follow. We do not want to extract morals from science, but to establish the science of morals, which is quite different."⁽¹⁴²⁾

Neither does such a scientific approach to the study of morality imply the impossibility of formulating an ideal. On the contrary, science may help us "to determine the ideal toward which we confusedly strive. Only that we do not elevate ourselves to this ideal until after having observed reality and thereby having made ourselves free"⁽¹⁴³⁾.

Even "the most intemperate idealist" cannot do otherwise, since the ideal do not repose on anything if it does not has any roots in reality. The only difference is that they study reality in a "very summery way", whereafter they formulate the "imperative" under which "they subdue their reason and demands to subdue ours". In stead moral science judge by a rule which "extract itself from the facts in themselves"⁽¹⁴⁴⁾.

What is important here is that Durkheim does not talk of reducing ethics to the natural sciences. Nor is he talking about moral sociology or sociology of morals. In fact he states that this moral science is not an application, "neither of sociology nor of psychology". It is "a purely speculative and autonomuous science", which however belongs to the domain of "the social sciences"⁽¹⁴⁵⁾ Whatever this in fact means,⁽¹⁴⁶⁾ it is clear that Durkheim wants is to continue doing ethics like the moralists, just better, recognizing that "the morales rules are eternal truths, which draws their value from themselves or from a trancendental source"⁽¹⁴⁷⁾. And to this ambition I fully subscribe.

E. Approaching moral reality

Durkheim states accordingly that for his approach to bear fruit, it is necessary that the study of the duties "is not reduced to a purely descriptive and in addition very general analysis." One has to constitute every one of the duties "in all complexity", determine the elements it contains, the conditions its development depends on, its role in relation to the individual and society. "It is only by particular investigations" one "little by little can liberate" oneself "from total views and a philosophical generalisation"⁽¹⁴⁸⁾.

Moral reality is so complex that it is not very likely that it has been artificially constructed out of two or three rules, and then aplied to the multitude of concrete cases. Morality consists in "a very big number of special precepts. There is not one duty, but several duties"⁽¹⁴⁹⁾, and a "general Law of morals" has no "scientific value" if it cannot account for this "diversity of moral facts". To Durkheim this means that to know which formula in fact does holds good for the facts, one has to analyze them, describe their peculiarities, determine their functions, investigate into their causes... and only by comparing these special-studies, can one extract "the properties common to all moral rules, that is, the constituive characters of morality"⁽¹⁵⁰⁾. It is "evidently impossible to find the law which dominates a world that vast and varied, if one does not begin by observing it in its total extention"⁽¹⁵¹⁾. And given this variation the "science of moral facts" indeed becomes "very labourious and very complexe"⁽¹⁵²⁾.

To a start we know for "certain" that morals "develops in history", that it depends on "historical causes", and that it thus have "a function in our temporal life"⁽¹⁵³⁾. History shows us that "what was moral for one people could be immoral for another, and not just in fact, but in right"⁽¹⁵⁴⁾

If [morality] is in one way or another at a given time, it is because the conditions under which people live do not permit it to be otherwise, and the test of this is that it changes when the conditions changes, and only in this case.⁽¹⁵⁵⁾

Durkheim does not find it "possible" any longer to believe in the development of morals as the spontanous development of an idea from a primitive confused state to that of the enlightened civilization. If the earlier times did not have "the broad conception of [...] humanity" which we have today, it is not due to "the narrowness of their intelligence"⁽¹⁵⁶⁾, but because such ideas were incompatible with the "nature" of the society they lived in. What makes the change in morality "necessary" is precisely "the changes which produces itself in the structure of the societies"⁽¹⁵⁷⁾.

Thus Durkheim leaves the Hegelian scheme of historical development, which he found in the ethics of Wilhelm Wundt,⁽¹⁵⁸⁾ and which he found defective and superficious, in favour of a very sympathetic respect for man at any time of his history. However, this is not the only preconception which might lead one astray in the study of pratical philosophical matters, and even though having left the historical conception of human spirit, still the thought of Durkheim is charaterized by a general "evolutionary optimism"⁽¹⁵⁹⁾, making him believe that in the end moral science will in fact be able to deliver what Durkheim think it will deliver, that is, objective answers to normative ethical problems.

F. Which science, which morality?

Durkheim expresses the hope that he can "at least shake" the "prejudice" that the study of facts should imply that one can only "observe that which is" without being able to provide "rules of conduct for the future"⁽¹⁶⁰⁾. I also share this hope but with some important reservations. The reason is doubts concerning two of Durkheim's central conceptions, i.e. that of science and that of morality.

Because even though moral science is to be autonomous it is made clear that it will still be a social science in search of explanatory laws, and these laws are thought to provide the basis for formulating normative rules of conduct. But if we know these laws to be only schematic generalisations of the tendencies found in society, how can they function as moral rules by Durkheim's own criterias? How can we be convinced that they are indeed obligatory? How can we feel them as obligatory?

By Durkheim's own account morality as it is, the moral phenomenas, consists of a lot of particular precepts which obliges us without any intermedeary principles. No doubt there must be some common consitutive traits for that which we subsume under the title of morality, and the search for this is characteristic of philosophical ethics; but the question is if these characteristics proper to the moral phenomenas can be captured and preserved by a formulation of a general law which by Durkheim's own account is only a schematic generalisation. To be morally convincing and motivating such a law must have the same charateristics as those of the particular precepts, that is, the law must allready be part of morality. This is indeed the case with the general principles from which the moralists depart, and Durkheim must then think of the laws as of the same type as moral principles, themselves conveyed with moral force.

This would normaly qualify the laws sought for as different from the explanatory laws of the other positive sciences, but if this is so, then how is Durkheim's moral science possible as a science which follows the methods of the positive sciences? If Durkheim's moral science is to be something qualitatively better than traditional ethics, he must concieve of laws as such as morally valuable; if not then he just proposes being more carefull within ethics. The latter is what he in fact tends to do with his focus on the teoretical aspect of ethics as to be improved in order to decide practically.⁽¹⁶¹⁾ This would however give him some problems with 'the naturalistic fallacy', which he recognizes as a relevant argument,⁽¹⁶²⁾ and in fact I think he more or less conciously therefore employ the former alternative as well, i.e attributing science and thereby it laws moral value eo ipso.⁽¹⁶³⁾ Whether this strategy, however, in some interpretation points to a possibility of overcoming 'the natural fallacy' I cannot for the moment answer, but it has to be considered seriously.

Whatever be the case, from Durkheim's perspective it is quite reasonable, since he allready concieves morality as essentially rules of action or, more frequently, rules of conduct, that is, allready in its bases in a regular form ressembling laws, and that makes it reasonable to link morality to regularity and normality, both in thought and action. If this is the case then it is not hard to see that laws and the positive sciences that produces them are allready moral, no matter what part of reality they treat. It is the scientific procedure in it self that conveys moral value to the laws. Hence being scientific is a moral duty.⁽¹⁶⁴⁾

In the Durkheimian perspective science is not just an self-sufficient and self-enclosed activity. Science has a moral role to play and this role is to produce knowledge for the benefit of humanity or, maybee more correct, of the nation.⁽¹⁶⁵⁾ This knowledge is therefore morally obliged to be relieable, and this is the reason why moral science is at the same time a prolongation of traditional philosophical ethics and something more and qualitatively better than what the moralists could obtain. Science gives ethics both better facts and a better methodology, which makes it posible to derive the principles which are not only subjective and approximate, but of objective moral validity.

In this project traditional and modern values converges, the former preoccupied by social order and regularity, the latter by natural and intellectual order and rationality. In is thus not unfair to see Durkheim' s moral science as a direct consequence of, indeed an intent to fullfil Comte's programme for a Morale as the seventh stage, with the inspirations from the German moral sciences, ...

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This however, this also indicates the problematical in the conception, not just of science as moral in itself, but also both of science as an activity establishing explanatory laws, and morality as consisting of rules to be followed. In fact, I propose to take the critique of the moralists even more serious than Durkheim himself did, i.e. that one has to pay even more attention to moral facts and phenomenas before one turns to establihing general conceptions of, for instance, whether or not morality does indeed consists of rules of conduct.

What makes the evaluation of Durkheim's conception of moral science even more difficult is that the relations to institutions directly influences thought, that is, that Durkheim's effort to institutionalize sociology as a recognized empirical science played a very big role, both in the formulation of and in the insistance on his theoretical conceptions, just as does any aspiration to get the institutional recognition and the privileges which follows from it.⁽¹⁶⁶⁾ and any defence of allready achieved institutional priveleges.⁽¹⁶⁷⁾

However, Durkheim still achieved some valuable insight by his line of thought, and it still is worth the effort to follow the rest of his argumentation, because it clearly demonstrates Durkheim's sensibility to the moral facts, even though he also proves to be under the very strong dopple influence of his preconceptions of modern science and traditional morality.

VI. Towards a scientifically operative definition of morality

With Durkheim's demands to the scientific study of morality we can now consider the way he argues for his more specifik conception of morality which is necessary for carrying out the task of such a science, i.e. deciding on a scientific basis normative ethical questions.

A. The exterior sign of obligatory rules: Repression

The first question Durkheim poses to himself is how at all to recognize those "moral facts" which are to be the object of this science. Following the ideals of natural science Durkheim opts for "some exterior and visible sign"⁽¹⁶⁸⁾ instead of traditional moralist formulas. He takes it to be "evident" that morality consists in "rules of conduct", but since obviously not all rules of conduct are moral, one has to present some "traits" to distinguish the moral ones from the others. Durkheim gives two:

"1. When an act, which in virtue of its nature is obliged to conform to a moral rule, deviate from it, society, if it is informed, intervene to make obstacle to the deviation. It reacts in an active way against the agent."⁽¹⁶⁹⁾ The murderer is punished with "material pain", dishonor by public disapproval, breaking a contract calls for repair etc. This is not the case for rules of conduct, for instance, within business; there one has one's freedom, to loose and to gain.

"2. This social reaction follows the infraction with a veritable necessity; it is predetermined sometimes even into its modalities. Everybody knows beforehand what will happen if the act is recognized as contrary to the rule, be it by competent tribunals or by public opinion." A "moral or material constraint"⁽¹⁷⁰⁾ is imposed on the agent, either to punish him, to make him remake the things as they were before, or to do both. This is not the case with the consequences of not following traditional technical rules; they are more contingent, meaning that breaking the rule sometimes produce favorable changes. The individual can freely chose the rules to be obeyed, and within this area of social activity, often "even with succes".

On the contrary, when the infraction is of those [rules] which the society formally opposes to, then all innovation is combatted as a fault. The only possible progresses are those which society makes collectively.⁽¹⁷¹⁾

The problem Durkheim presents, how we can get knowledge about morality, is a real problem for anybody working within the fields of ethics and who is not convinced about his prophetic talents or believes himself to be able to see directly into the minds of people or the essens of the universe. As Durkheim showed convincingly in the critique of philosophical ethics,⁽¹⁷²⁾ there are indeed many moralist who more or less explicitly takes their own special faculties in this regard for granted.

However, Durkheim's conception of morality and science leads him astray allready from the start. Even though it is ackknowledged that all morality is a social fact, not all societal morality can be seen as repressive rules of conduct. It is, for instance, in general ackknowledged that to make an exception, to show mercy in an extraordinary case spite of all existing moral and legal rules is to be human and thus within the area of societal morality. And the resistance of the less favoured against the pressures of the most favoured is also normally acknowledged as morally justified. These moral facts, however, are hard to concieve of as obligatory rules of conduct and do not that clearly show the exterior sign of being supported socialy by repression.⁽¹⁷³⁾

B. The exterior symbol of obligatoryness: The sanction

From these considerations Durkheim arrives to the formulation of the connection between moral rules and sanctions. "This predetermined reaction, excercized by society on the agent who breaks the rule" is what constitutes "sanction", and this means that "every moral fact consist in the sanctionized rule of conduct." This is simply a "more precise and scientific translation" of what is "generally admitted" to characterize moral rules, i.e. that they are "obligatory"⁽¹⁷⁴⁾.

Again, however, Durkheim asks how we can "recognize the presense of this character" of moral rules. If we consult the "conscience⁽¹⁷⁵⁾" about "direct intuitions" as to if the obligation in reality is "felt", this gives rise to the problem that "not all consciences are alike, not even inside the same society". So to which conscience should we turn? "To that of the cultivated man, to that of the worker, to that of the delinquent?" Of course, Durkheim says, one has to consult the "conscience normale", that which is most generally shared conscience within society, but still it is "impossible to see directly"⁽¹⁷⁶⁾ how the rules of conduct are "represented" there.

Hence Durkheim finds himself in the situation to have to recur to "some external fact which reflects the interior state", and there is nothing which can "play that role"⁽¹⁷⁷⁾ better than sanction, since it express a "necessary" reaction, meaning that it is impossible that members of a society could ackknowledge rules of conduct as obligatory without reacting on the violation of them. It is important, however, as Durkheim himself recognizes to avoid misunderstandings.

If we then define the moral rule by the sanction attached to it, this is not because we consider the sentiment of obligation as a product of the sanction. On the contrary, it because the latter is derived from the former that it can serve to symbolize it, and as this symbole have the big advantage of being objective, accessible to observation and even to mesurement, it is methodologically to prefer to the thing it represents.⁽¹⁷⁸⁾

To become scientific the study of moral facts "ought to follow the example of the other sciences" and distance itself from "personal sensations of the observer". The moralist must only take as obligatory that which in reality is obligatory, i.e. not that which only appears to him to be obligatory. And: "The reality of an obligation is only certain when it manifests itself through some sanction."⁽¹⁷⁹⁾

Again, the problems Durkheim poses to himself are both reasonable and relevant in relation to any serious study of morality. The way he solves them, however, leaves a lot to be desired. Here we clearly see how his very restricted, but also very common conception of science as a perpetual search for the Law which explains the phenomenas and of phenomenas as only to be counted with if visible leads him to the choice of the sanction as a scientifically usefull symbol of the obligatory character of morality. And we see the influence of the tradional conservative moralism; that he concieves of morality as primarily repressive rules, and only in this way,⁽¹⁸⁰⁾ is quite in accordance with the line of thought in the tradition from which he stems.⁽¹⁸¹⁾

C. Moral science and moral facts reconsidered

We must however remember that Durkheim in principle is only talking about the moral facts as phenomenas, and being a good Neo-kantian,⁽¹⁸²⁾ this means for Durkheim as a scientist leaving open the question of the nature of morals, i.e. leaving it to metaphysics, which he, however, also have strong interests in. But let the source be solidarity or some trancendental goal; whatever is the case, still moral science can find regularities in the world of phenomenas, and this is the only reality science can determine. So the obligatoryness as the only distinguising mark of morality is in fact only a conjectural hypothesis. This is why Durkheim can actually let himself be convinced later by new facts and eventually change his conception of which regularities in fact best account for the moral phenomenas.⁽¹⁸³⁾

However, moral facts are a special kind of social facts, and first we must ask if they are best concieved of as rules of conduct, which Durkheim takes to be evident. It is correct that we tend to interpretate morality as precepts, especially when we are required to justify our moral reactions afterwards. And there are also many cases where we try to figure out what do before the action by reference to precepts. But the question is if this is basicly what morality is?

Taking the facts seriously must from my point of view mean recognizing both some specific reactions and actions as moral, and that some precepts do have some kind of immideate pursuading force, which sometimes seems to remind us that we have to act in a certain way, by reference to nothing else than these precepts, of which some are very specifik whereas others are very general and thus interpretable. If we only take the precepts, or rules, into consideration, we allready accept morality as basicly conscious rule-following, which to me seems an unsubstantiated limitation of moral facts even before having started the basic research.

Taking these specific moral actions and reactions seriously into account makes is thus difficult to accept as evident that morality only consist of rules of conduct. Of course some types of actions are more prone to be considered morally than others, but as far as I can see, the only thing certain is that they are basicly social actions in the sense given by Weber, i.e. actions which affects more than the person who acts.⁽¹⁸⁴⁾ This of course includes both face-to-face situated action and action-on-a-distance.⁽¹⁸⁵⁾ But not even this limitation is certain, because of the development of morality and ethics to cover not only actual human beings, but also not-yet-born so-called future generations, animals, yes, even nature itself or planet Earth.⁽¹⁸⁶⁾ I however have my doubts if this is genuinely moral concerns, which are at stake when it comes to more than animals, and even there I would consider it a morality which, though genuinely felt, has been in some way transferred from the basic moral, which concerns human beings.

But I am not totally sure, and what is more, I would consider being sure beforehand as the wrong attitude to have before approaching philosophical ethics with a scientific spirit. And this is precisely what is wrong with the attitude shown by Durkheim here. He do not seem to be able to doubt his initial hypothesis as to the basics of moral facts, both because of his conception of science as basicly in search of Laws and because of his conception of morality as basicly repressive. Doubting both conception in favour of a closer look on the moral facts is indeed justified and I think it might be fruitfull to employ a more phenomenological approach,⁽¹⁸⁷⁾ allthough at the present stage I actually do not know.

But even if we grant Durkheim his basic approach, it is not without serious problems. To distinquish moral rules from other rules, we employ a preconception of morality. But to me, for instance, the distinctive trait seems to be more than that of repression that moral rules are thought of by those who hold them, as absolutely certain, whereas practical technical rules tends to be held more contingently and tentatively. The quest for certainty is a moral preoccupation, because the moral rules one holds for correct are absolutely right; if they were not, one would hold others to be right and if one becomes in doubt about moral rules, one wants to know for certain if they are true or not. No moral mind can live with perpetual uncertainty.

And this criteria is actually percievable in the same way as Durkheim's sanctions because of, for instance, public condemnation without reservations or the heated moral and ethical discussions we make public by more or less violent outcries, and which therefore are very often to be observed, allthough by hearing, not by seeing. The sign is not visible, but audible, which however should still be accptable to a positive science. But if we want visiblity, we can consult written texts of which there should be quite a lot making manifest the basic attitude of the moral mind as one of certainty.

And indeed Durkheim himself ascribes certainty a decesive value. The outward signs of morality were allegedly chosen for scientific reasons, i.e. because they are more certain, because we cannot verify positively what happens in the conscience of others, and we know this quest for certainty to be a central preoccupation in theoretical as well as practical matters, which again indicates the moral charachter of Durkheim's scientific enterprise en total.⁽¹⁸⁸⁾ But it is hard to see how this character can be formulated as scientific rule as Durkheim concieves of it, i.e. quantifiable; because the certainty is not one of degree in the situation, but one of either-or, both in practical and theoretical matters. Certainty means basicly knowing the truth, here and now, allthough one can be wrong, but only in principle.

But the argument for the necessity of finding a perceptible way to accertain moral facts is in itself defective. That the outward signs of rules are the only way to obtain certainty in morality is the final consequence of Durkheim's recognition of individual, cultural and historical relativity. But for the argument to hold, the relativity has to be unlimited, i.e. that there are no limits of what can serve as moral obligations, that the variation within morality goes from being obliged to kill indiscreminately to being obliged to refrain from doing so, and this is simply not in accordance with the moral facts. There are indeed limits as to what kind of precepts can serve as moral precepts for human beings. Just as Durkheim recognizes that there is no societies without morality,⁽¹⁸⁹⁾ to me it is equally evident that there are no human beings without morality, and this morality has to be moral, i.e. sharing some basic charactericas ⁽¹⁹⁰⁾ Here again, Durkheim lets himself be guided by his scientific preconceptions in stead of trusting those fact which he so rightly poses against the other moralists.

And if even we grant Durkheim that morality is basicly repression, then morality is not the only repression within a society. Durkheim is aware of the repression by the Law, but this he takes as basicly of the same kind as morality.⁽¹⁹¹⁾ But besides the moral and legal repression there is also political and economical repression, which in no way can be seen as independent of moral and legal repression, even though it can be difficult to determine precisely what is the relation. But one thing is a fact: A great deal of morality and Law does indeed function so as to legitimize and protect the privileges of the allready most favoured groups of a society, exactly by administrating repression in favour of status quo. But even if this is the case, one can allways ask meaningfull, pace Hume and Moore,⁽¹⁹²⁾ whether the moral repression by society is in fact morally justifiable.

Still, the conservatives and with them Durkheim were not totally wrong. Morality as a phenomenon do in deed in some important aspects show the traits concieved of by Durkheim, but the question is if these are the most adequate to focus on to get a better comprehension of morality as a whole. To me this is clearly not the case, but I still think that the traits which Durkheim presents in fact constitutes an important of morality. But it is obvious that Durkheim has a very loaded and restricted concept of morality, even before starting looking at the facts.

Nevertheless, given my reservations, I still think it is possible to at least follow Durkheim in his aspirations of doing ethics better, and maybee even in some sense scientific; I mean, what is ethics if not in some way the scientific side of morality? However, moral facts, apart from being undeniably social, are a very special kind of facts, which to be captured fully, if at all, needs methods much more sophiticated than those of the positive sciences as understood by Durkheim.

D. Too inclusive? The Law

Having however satisfied himself with this initial definition of moral facts as sanctionized rules of conduct, Durkheim again orders his argument in an classical way to make an initial check of the definition in relation to the matter to be explained, to see whether it covers too much, too little or is just about suitable to serve as hypothesis for further investigations.

He thus asks himself if this conception does not make the whole of Law part of morality. Durkheim has no doubt that they are in fact "intimately" related and that there is a "continuos interchange"⁽¹⁹³⁾ between them, moral rules becoming juridical and juridical rules becoming moral. One cannot make the distinction between them without endning up in an "complexity" very difficult to resolve. The respect for property, for instance, depends on the way it has been aquired. If the adquisition has not been made in a legally recognized way, i.e. by "inherritence", "prescriptive right" or simply "taking over"; if the adquisition has not been moral, or even "immoral", "how can the property itself have any moral value?" And the respect for legal authority presupposes the institution of such an authority as prescribed by constitutional Law; but if the latter does not contain anything moral, "how can the powers created by it have any right to our respect?"⁽¹⁹⁴⁾

If one lets moral penetrate into Law, it invades it, and, if it does not penetrate it, it rests in the state of dead litterature, of pure abstractions, in stead of being an effective discipline of the will.⁽¹⁹⁵⁾

These two "orders of phenomena"⁽¹⁹⁶⁾ are indeed so close that Durkheim thinks they should be treated within the same science. The infraction of both types of rules means "repression" which to be efficient must take "material form" of "a movement in space", either by legal punishment or keeping the moral "distance". The difference between morals and Law is not of "intrinsic" character, but "in the way they are administrated"⁽¹⁹⁷⁾.

The first is applied by everybody and by all, the second by a defined and constituted body; the first is diffuse, the second organized. The first can be doppled by the other; the blame of public opinion can be accompanied by legal pains properly speaking. But every rule of conduct to which is attached a diffuse repressive sanction, be it alone or not, is moral, in the ordinary sense of the word.⁽¹⁹⁸⁾

This definition constitute sufficient "proof" for Durkheim to conclude "that the positive science of the moral is a branch of sociology", because every sanction first of all is a "social thing"⁽¹⁹⁹⁾. However philosophical ethics wants to concieve of duties as individual, they are nevertheless sanctionized socially and thus only individual "by appearence". They have been concieved of differently in various epochs, and only the change of the "social environment" has been "profound"⁽²⁰⁰⁾ enough to account for these transformations.

Durkheim now takes the consequence of the tendency of his moral science to concentrate on the fact like every other positive science. In fact, this seems to be the only way open for Durkheim to argue for its status as science. This, however, means seperating more clearly theoretical and practical matters, dealing with the latter only after having dealt satisfactorly with the former, and thus making himself more vulnarable to arguments of 'the naturalistic fallcy'-type. Especially when these fact are seen as social things, i.e. social facts with the highest degree of objectivity. Again the scientific attitude merges well with the conservative French tradition of concieving of morality as something which essentially should be searched for outside oneself.⁽²⁰¹⁾ So Durkheim's crude conception of science and his linear rationalist methodology simply does not allow him to think of moral science in any other way than sociology of morality, allthough carried out with the intent of answering normative questions.

I have not put much weight on the explicit methodology which Durkheim presented in Les règles de la méthode sociologique⁽²⁰²⁾, because it shows Durkheim "at his worst" whereas he is "at his best"⁽²⁰³⁾ in precisely the degree where he neglects, departs from or even contradicts his own rules. This being the case, and believing in general that the method followed must in some be adjusted to the subjectmatter studied, I have prefered to follow Durkheim's actual approach to see how his actually approach morality. And in fact Durkheim does not submit the moral facts to a sociological method untill after having philosophically convinced himself of a problematic preconception of morality as rules, and the use he does of specific sociological methodology at this phase of his studies is thus very limited.

E. Too exclusive? The morality beyond obligations

Having thus refined his definition in relation to Law Durkheim turns to consider if this definition may not be to limited, excluding parts of reality which we normally include within morality, "a more elevated sphere which surpases the duty", like acts out of charity. These acts considered of the ethics of perfection as morally "praiseworthy", but which nevertheless are not obligatory and do not imply "guilt" if not performed.

For the ethics of perfection those acts however are still obligatory, but only to those capable of performing them. As Janet puts it: "I would be absurd to sustain that if a certain degree of perfection was possible to me, I would then have the right to be content with less; just as it would be absurd to demand from me a degree of perfection which my nature does not call for."⁽²⁰⁴⁾ However, Durkheim points out, the feeling of guilt which results from public blame and the feeling when one blames oneself for not doing ones duty are not then same, neither in "character" nor in "intensity":

They are both pains, but the first is a smarting pain due to the wound we have made with our own hands on the living parts of our conscience morale; the second, reduces to a regret of having let escape a delicious pleasure.⁽²⁰⁵⁾

In fact, Janet acknowledges two very distinct forms of virtues, one beeing sublime, free and individual, "giving birth to unexspected forms of grandour and generosity", the other inferiour, with "legal form", without any sponatuity, "following loyally a given rule"; "the true virtue, like the genious, escapes the rule or even create the rule"⁽²⁰⁶⁾. But these act Durkheim simply refuse any moral status:

We simply affirm that it would be contrary to any method to reunite under the same heading acts which are obliged to conforme with preestablished rules and others which are free of all regulation.⁽²⁰⁷⁾

If we reserve the first one the use of the word morality, the second ones cannot be moral; in classifying "phenomenas after their most important external character" one cannot classify two such different phenomenas together.

This to Durkheim is even more "striking" if we define morality, not as acting in conformity with rules, but as the rules themselves. "For there is no rule where there is no obligation."⁽²⁰⁸⁾ No doubt, there are some "very general precepts", which promises praise or public ackknowledgement to those who do more than their duty, but there is nothing "imperative" besides this "maxime", and one is left to imagine to which action this "recompensation" is attached. "The different ways of doing more than ones duty cannot be more defined than the different ways of doing less."⁽²⁰⁹⁾

These external differences corresponds to "internal and profound differences". The "contingence", the place left to "imagination", the non-necessity shows these act to be a "luxury", inside "the domain of art".

After we have forced a part of our physical and intellectual energy to fullfill its daily tasks, we like to let it play in liberty, give it a free hand, to let it expend itself for the [sheer] pleasure of expending itself, without serving anything, without our proposing any definite goal to ourselves. In this consist the pleasure of playing of which the estetic pleasure is nothing but a superior form.⁽²¹⁰⁾

To Durkheim this is the way to understand the "real virtues" of Janet. When the moral energy has been freed from its "daily obligation, its regular duties", it feels the need to "pour out itself" for the sole reason of pouring out itself, to "play with new combinations", "neither determined nor imposed" by any rule, just for the sake of doing it, "for the joy of being free". This is for Durkheim the reason for not only special cases of "heroic sacrifices"⁽²¹¹⁾, but all kinds of cultural and moral refinement of costums. Thus what Janet calls "beautifull innovations" are not encountered only under "extraordinary circumstance", but are an important part of life, admired in spite of "their consequences whose utility is often dubious": "What we love is the free deployment of the moral force, no matter the efficiency of what follows."⁽²¹²⁾

These "manifestation", as part of "the domain of estitics", however form a "very special sphere". The have "something moral" in that they have "derived habits and tendencies acquired in the praxis of moral life", like "the need to give oneself, leave oneself, to occupy oneself with the neighbour". But these "dispositions" which are "moral in their origin" is not "employed morally", because morality "disappears" together with the obligation, which means that this is only "the estetics of moral life".

The distinction must be opheld, and not only for theoretical reasons: Durkheim fears the acknowledgement as moral or, worse, morally superior of this "estetico-moral" sphere of individual creation and undetermined by any rules, may weaken the feeling of obligation, "that is, the existence of duty". In relation to morals it must be seen as an "anomaly" and "the anomaly is the negation of all moral"⁽²¹³⁾.

F. Too much! Goodbye, monsieur Durkheim! Or...?

By this way of turning his initial definition of morality as obligatory rules and his crude scientific methodology against an ethical opponent Durkheim has clearly overstated his case.⁽²¹⁴⁾ It seems that all is forgotten about looking at the facts in all their peculiarity, analyzing their functions and causes, taking into acoount all the variety of morality etc. An ackknowledged part of morality is simply excluded and refered to estetics, i.e. to an area with quite different norms for validity.

So what happened? Well, taking for evident that morality was obligatory rules of conduct, Durkheim asked for exterior visible traits and found the sanctions. Morality was thus socially sanctionized rules, with the qualification that they were diffuse. And this simply made him refuse that there could be morals beyond obligations. It seems that Durkheim not only did not live up to his own precepts for a moral science, but that he indeed showed himself to be even a very bad example of the same moralist, he critizes. So it seems that Gurvitch was right in accusing him of producing, not moral sociology, but dogmatic deductive moral philosophy.⁽²¹⁵⁾

However, this also became clear to Durkheim before long, and, as noted above,⁽²¹⁶⁾ this argumentation is actually not included in the second edition from 1902. But Durkheim did not leave it by that. He actually readmitted into morality the type of phenomenas which we saw him excluding without any scrouples, only now interpretating it as also societal in origin, i.e. not as an individual creation. That meant at the same time given up the most crude scientific methodology, in that he thereby admitted the existence of phenomenas with a seemingly contradictory status, the prime example being the sacred, which is both surrounded by prohibitions and at the same time longed for as the supreme good. This character is what Durkheim also finds in morality, after having given the facts a second look.⁽²¹⁷⁾

G. The end of the story

Before following Durkheim's argument for this, however, let us just finish the story from the Preface and the Introduction of De la division du travaille social, of respect to his initial, fruitfull critique of the moralist and his remarks how to conduct moral science, whose implications as I have interpretated them,⁽²¹⁸⁾ I would like to see applied to all future ethics.

1. Anomaly and moral health

Turning to the last part of Durkheim's argument we meet the infamous distinction between what is normal, healthy or sane, and the pathological "anomaly", i.e. what is deviating or sick. The reason for introducing this distinction was allready given in the Preface. Moral science wants to extract the ideal moral principle from the study of moral life in itself,⁽²¹⁹⁾ i.e. from the study of society, and the ideal society is a healthy society.

There is state of moral health which only the science can determine with competence, and since it in no way totally realized, it is allready an ideal to search for in order to approach it.⁽²²⁰⁾

This health can be improved and made more perfect, but the perfection can only be determined in function of the normal state. "Making it perfect is making it more in accordance with itself." The perfection must get its value from an ideal which stemms from "the nature of being and the conditions on which it depends", and not from some "transcendental and mystic virtue". "The only ideal which human reason can propose to itself is to improve that which is"⁽²²¹⁾.

The reason to introduce the distinction here is that Durkheim acknowledges that the "conscience morale"⁽²²²⁾ of society can indeed be wrong, and that we therefore need a criterium for deciding whether this is the case or not, i.e. the societal morality is healthy or sick. Again, a no way unreasonable thought which however, when shaped to be operational, eventually becomes very crude and not at all convincing.

Durkheim employs the methodology of the "naturalist", to whom an individual specimen is normal if it belongs to the statistically defined middle category, and pathological if it does not. To moral science this means making normality and deviance relative to types of society, "social types", because we know that rules of conduct varies from one society to another. For instance, in "our European societies infantcide, which in other place goes unpunished, is severely prohibited"⁽²²³⁾.

The social type, however, evolves like the society and organisms in general, and to determine the relevant social type one has thus to know the actual stage of development of society, whether it is young, mature or old. This can only be done by distinquishing certain charecters of the "structure and the functions"⁽²²⁴⁾ of society, and, allthough some "obejctive sign" are known, like the that decline of the birth-rate proves that society has "reached or passed" maturity, the task of defining suitable social types to each stage of societal development is difficult and must avait the progress of science.

That society evolves means also that conscience morale at a certain time may not be perfectly adapted to the social type, be it because it suited a social type of the past or because it is more in accordance with a social type which is in the state of becoming. Still, to decide the moral value of a given rule one has, first, to establish the normal social type, by "comparing it with itself" and its antecedents; and, second, compare the rule with rules, whose "intrinsic morality" in relation to the social type are allready is established. If the former serves the same ends and results from similar causes as the latter, "one has the right to conclude [...] that it ought to be willed at the same level and in the same way as other obligatory rules of conduct, [...] that it is moral"⁽²²⁵⁾.

The conclussion of the whole process of thought Durkheim expresses as a formal definition:

One defines as a normal moral fact for a given social specimen, considered at a determined phase of its development, all rules of conduct to which a repressive diffuse sanction is attached in the average of societies of this species, considered in the same periode of their evolution; secondarily, the same qualification applies to every rule which, without presenting clearly this criterium, is nevertheless analogue to certain of the preceding rules, i.e. serve the same ends and depend on the same causes.⁽²²⁶⁾

This definition, insists Durkheim, simply expresses more precisely what moralists of all schools actually do.⁽²²⁷⁾ They have to take their departure in "an acknowledged and uncontested" morality, which cannot be other than the one "most generally followed of their time and their environement". If not, then the moralists would have to construct "by the sheer force of thought" the whole system of social relations since "the moral penetrates them all". Even when they make innovations, they cannot do other than "translate" reformist tendencies; the theories can indeed clar matters, but they can only direct themselves to "the same goal as this or that moral praxis whose moral authority in undisputed"⁽²²⁸⁾.

2. Moral value of division of labour

With this definition of morality we can finally consider the initial question of the moral value of the division of labour.

To cope with nature all the human energy available is required and Durkheim thinks it better to concentrate the effort to gain in intensity even if something is lost in extension. The traditional ideals of individual human perfection, wholeness and balance between the faculties, means that "each forms an independent world", which is "anti-social". This man could only be a "dilettante" and Durkheim "denies dilettantism any moral value". In stead modern human perfection must be to learn ones "role" well, to be capable to "fulfil ones function"⁽²²⁹⁾. Thus Durkheim detects "the categorical imperative of the conscience morale" which is about to take form as: "Put yourself in a state to usefully fulfil a determined fuction."⁽²³⁰⁾

One cannot prohibit the facts. Hence, if the division of labour is a natural law, to condem it "without reservations" would mean "an unintelligable divorce between reality and morality".

The moral lives form life of the world; hence it would be impossible that what is necessary for the world to live was contrary to the moral.⁽²³¹⁾

Still Durkheim admits that there is room for doubt as to the moral value of this natural fact, quoting various critics, among them Tocqueville.⁽²³²⁾ This Durkheim believes to be due to the co-presence of two contrary tendencies in the consience morale, where the one however seems to be about to shift the balance. But the facts available do not allow us to decide for certain "if this evolution ought [...] to continue in this sense until its total achievement"⁽²³³⁾

This is the reason why we have to carry through the "speculative"⁽²³⁴⁾ study of the division of social labour, to be able to compare it in the way described⁽²³⁵⁾ with other moral phenemenas whose moral value is undisputed. The answer however seems to be given allready beforehand, and in fact, Durkheim in the end finds that the division of labour has indeed moral value, because "the ideal of human fraternity can only realize itself in the degree that the division of labour progresses."⁽²³⁶⁾

Why and how this is so, however, is not relevant in this context. My reason for introducing Durkheim was to learn more about the basic sociological approach to morality, to be able to understand what kind of knowledge about morality one could obtain from sociology.⁽²³⁷⁾ And having allready denied the relevancy of the final outcome of his present line of thought,⁽²³⁸⁾ there is no need to go into detail about how he decides normatively on moral matters on the basis of this.

All in all, from the point of view of philosophical ethics, i.e. my point of view, Durkheim's intents to develop a scientifically operative definition of morality, which can serve us in answering normative ethical question becomes, by Durkheim's own terms, just another moralist position, cutting down the facts by means of intuitions and pre-scientific pre-conceptions about the nature of morality as rules of conduct and a crude methodology whose restricted mono-linear deductive logic excludes every other conception by means of definition. However, at noted before, this is not the final word. Durkheim continues to develop his conception of morality and his second attempt is more fruitfull, contributing with valueable insights about the moral facts.

VII. The determination of morality

As mentioned above⁽²³⁹⁾ Durkheim however changed his conception of morality quite radically between the first and the second edition of De la division du travail social, and an account of this new conception is found in Durkheim's lecture from 1906, "Determination du fait moral"⁽²⁴⁰⁾, an account which Lukes qualifies as Durkheim's best and most systematical,⁽²⁴¹⁾ but which nevertheless only very seldom is refered to.

Apparently the new conception does not reflect a basically new approach. On the contrary, it seems like it is a more thorough investigation of the moral facts and a more systematical line of thought which has led him to admit into his conception of morality the aspects which he were so quick to dismis in the above mentioned arguments,⁽²⁴²⁾ i.e. those positive aspects which cannot be understood as obligations backed up by social sanctions and which Durkheim in the new conception gather under the heading of 'desirability'.

A. Methodological continuity

Durkheim reconfirms his emphasis on only studying the "objective aspect"⁽²⁴³⁾ of morality,⁽²⁴⁴⁾ "the objective moral reality, that which serves as a common and impersonal fixed point to judge the actions."⁽²⁴⁵⁾ He wants to "determine what morality is", and declares himself to be uninterested in the "subjective aspect", i.e. how various individuals, including philosophers and moralists "prensent morals to themselves"; to Durkheim that can only be regarded as "more or less adequate expressions of the morality of their time", not as "scientific explications"⁽²⁴⁶⁾ of past or present moral reality. He also reinforces his emphasis on only approaching morality theoretically.⁽²⁴⁷⁾ He still wants to "know" and "understand" the moral reality, not to judge it practically by confering value to it in accordance with some "determined morality"⁽²⁴⁸⁾. Given the "actual disarray of moral ideas", before one can judge, one has to start by "knowing the moral reality"⁽²⁴⁹⁾.

Durkheims final goal is still a scientific explication of the "moral rules", or "at least the most important among them", by classifying, examinating, making inventories, determinating their natal causes and functionality of each particular rule in order to finally be able to "catch a glimse of the general causes on which those essential characteristics depends which they have in common." In this lecture however, he limits himself to proceding "dialectically" by means of a certain number of "postulats"⁽²⁵⁰⁾; among "men of good faith", i.e. his fellowphilosophers of La société française de philosophie(!!!), and within moral matters where "hypothesis allways occupy a big place"⁽²⁵¹⁾ dialectical argumentation is not allways in vain.

He also continues to recognize that moral fact are of a special kind and that therefore moral science must be a very special science, allthough within the branch of sociology.

Characteristics p. 59

What is missing is the insistance on finding a scientifically operative definition, i.e. a definition which can be productive in establishing the laws which govern the moral given. Instead the goal is eventually to reach a "philosophic definition"⁽²⁵²⁾. The tension in Durkheims scientific positivism mentioned above⁽²⁵³⁾ between the insistance on taking the given facts seriously in all their particularity and the wish to establish universally valid laws has eventually for Durkheim as a philosopher meant a shift of balance in favour of the facts, and that is why he can allow himself to change conception without a radical break with his former self.

Durkheim do not any longer have to legitimize and establish sociology as a positive science by moral philosophical arguments, but can concentrate on ethical questions in themselves and let sociology as an allready established science support his philosophical arguments. So the focus and the balance has changed, and that means that argument has to be reversed, going, as we shall see below, from the given, i.e. the sanctions, to the interior character, obligatoriness, in stead of from an assumed interior character to the exteriorly given. Whereas the establishment of laws forms an acknowledged part of the positive sciences, this does not have to the outcome of philosophical reasoning, and therefore Durkheim does not have the same need for a scientifically operative definition in the crude sense used in De la division du travail social.

B. The new conception

Durkheim first establishes a conception of morality very close to the one presented in De la division du travail social, allthough he presents the ingrediences in another order, ending with what he finds to be an essential characteristic of morality.

To know morality one has to find out "by which characteritistics one can recognize and distinguish the moral facts". Morality presents itself as a "collection of maximes, of rules of conduct, which prescribes us ways to act"⁽²⁵⁴⁾. Violating them have unpleasant consequenses, and these sanctions are the "exterior manifestation" of the rules, that which "traduces to the exterior their specific character". But this does not happen "mechanically" in a way which is "analytically implied" by the very notion of the act of violation. "The tie which unites the act and its consequence is [...] a synthetic tie."⁽²⁵⁵⁾ It is not the violating act in itself which causes the sanctions to appear, but the fact that it is an act of violation, "that the act does not conform with a preestablished rule", that it is "an act of rebellion against this rule"⁽²⁵⁶⁾. The reason is "the obligatory character of the moral rule", that we have to refrain from acts they forbid us to do "simply beacuse they forbid us [doing] them". To Durkheim this means refinding by means of "a strictly empirical analysis the notion of duty and obligation" in a form close to "how Kant understood it".

ccc

VIII. Les formes

IX. What does Durkheim mean by morality and ethics?

Durkheim claims "sociology to be alltogether collective psychology"⁽²⁵⁷⁾

X. What status has his claims?

XI. The nature of man

XII. Notes

1. Cf. Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, Oxford: Clarendon, 1975, p. 469 f. Here, however, quoted from Eva-Marie Engels: "George Edward Moores Argument der "naturalistic fallacy" in seiner relevanz für das Verhältnis von philosophisher Ethik und empirichen Wissenschaften" in Lutz H. Eckensberger & Ulrich Gähde (hrsg.): Ethische Norm und empirische Hypothese, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1993, p. 95, that is, translated into english from a german translation of Hume's original english. What is more I have some reservation as to whether the page given is correct; either I simply do not understand Engels' reference-system, or it is indeed ambigous. I'll have to look it up when I get back...zxz

2. Kant: Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), Akad. Ausg., IV, p. 389; here quoted from Eckensberger & Gähde: "Einleitung" in their above mentioned book, p. 7.

3. Cambridge: University Press, 1993 (revised ed.)

4. Cf. Eckensberger & Gähde, ibid.

5. Recognizing this meant that when I wanted to investigate into the question of moral dilemmas, I felt it more or less obligatory as a philosophers to follow the last twenty years discussion of moral diemmas in the analytical tradition, even though I allready had serious prejudices as to what would come out of it, that is, NOTHING. Cf. chapter zxz and zxz.

6. Muguerza: Desde la perplejidad, Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1990, p. 671

7. This is, of course most extreme, in the so-called 'applied ethics' treating ethical questions within medicine, and more generally bio-technology, animal-wellfare, environmental problems etc., cf. chapter 1 zxz. But the tendency is found whereever utilitarianism and kantianism are recognized as the main poles of a normative discussion.

8. Cf. Aristotle: Nikomachische Ethik, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1991 (1956), p. 7 (1095a)

9. The question of who has the right to intervene in the profession of ethics, if I for instance can demand being heard, I will leave aside for the moment. In the following I will simply asume that I will pas the test, matching whatever criterias I may end up proposing!!

10. Cf. his After Virtue, zxz

11. Cf. his Contingency, irony and solidarity, zxz

12. The psychology, for instance, which is presupposed in the ethics in the traditions of both Bentham and Kant can best be described as a "stick-and-carrot-psychology", allthough the former prefered shaping ethics after the carror-principle, whereas the latter had more confidence in the stick. Leafing through Kant's Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht from 1798 is quite revealing in this aspect.

13. Charles Taylor, for instance, is aware and makes use of many of the aspects of human reality brought forth by human and social sciences in this century; in fact he takes his departure in a common-sense understanding of morality highly refined; but he does not acknowledge it at a scientific contribution to be discussed, i.e. he does not quote anybody, but simply presents it as "moral intuitions" to be accepted as argued and described; having done this he re-enters, as shown above in chapter zxz, into the game of philosophical reasoning. Cf. his Sources of the Self, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 3-8.

14. One of my danish colleges in the field of ethics, for instance, wanted to get some substantial knowledge about morality, and then happened to stumple over the sociological studies of Edward Westermarck, who was severely critized for his Biblical prejudices by one of sociologys founding fathers, Émile Durkheim (cf. Lukes: Émile Durkheim. Su vida y su obra (1973), Madrid: Centro de investigaciones sociologicas-Siglo XXI de España, 1984, p. 180), to whom I will return to,(See below zxz), and who is not found worthy mention by any of the mainstream-introductions to sociology, I have read (see below zxz). These studies my college used as empirical support for his normative claims. However, besides observations of man's morality, Westermarck - in my eyes - distinguised himself in his theoretical work by, without any second-thoughts, accepting anthropological "evidence" showing that the mongolians had a great appetite, making each of them able to eat whole cow during their grand fiestas! zxz Courtesy forbids me to refer to my colleges work. What is relevant, however, is that it was accepted as a doctoral thesis in Oxford, in one of the centers of analytic moral philosophy. As a more prominent, but less clear-cut eksample one could mention Jürgen Habermas' use of the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, cf. Habermas: "Moralbewußtsein und kommunikatives Handeln" in the book with the same title, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1983, p. 127ff.

15. Durkheim, whose arguments against philosophical ethics will be presented below, expressed a similar line of thought in a critique of one of his contemporary social philosophers: "Today it is no longer permitted to speculate about the nature of life, without having familiarized oneself with the technicalities of biology. In virtue of which privilege, then, is it permitted by the philosopher to speculate about the society, without entering in contact with the concrete social facts?" (Quoted from Lukes, op.cit., p. 401.)

16. Salvador Giner: "Sociología y filosofía moral" in Victoria Camps (ed.): Historia de la Ética, vol. 3, Barcelona: Critica, 1989, p. 121. Even in the case of Habermas, whose discourse ethics was developed after, or alongside, his reconstruction of the development of the social sciences and the construction of his own theory of social change, it does not seems to me that sociological knowledge about morality has played a very decive part. This also seems to be the opinion of Javier Muguerza, cf, his Desde la perplejidad, Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1990, p. 638. Habermas has been much more interrested in gaining support from Kohlberg's cognitive psychology, cf. Habermas, op.cit. Cf. also Adela Cortina: "La ética discursiva" in V. Camps (ed.): Historia de la Ética, Barcelona: Crítica, 1989, vol. 3, p. 552f

17. It is simply beyond my capacity, for the moment at least, to cope with more than one branch of the human and social sciences in a satisfactory way. That it happened to be sociology, however, was just as much a matter of coincidence as of choice; my stay in Valencia gave me the possibility to get an overall idea of scoiology, whereas this was not possible with regard to, for instance, psychology.

18. I myself have benefitted from doctoral courses in sociological theory at the University of Valencia, various lectures given over the years at the University of Copenhagen, books such as George Ritzer's Teoría Sociológica Clasica and Teoría Sociológica Contemporanea (1992), both Madrid: McGraw-Hill, 1993, Anthony Giddens: Sociology. A brief but critical introduction, Houndmills: Macmillian, ²1986 (1982), and Zygmunt Bauman's Thinking Sociologically, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, and from personal relationsships over the years with sociologists.

19. Cambridge: Polity Press, ²1991 (1989)

20. Cf. Anthony Giddens, quoted on the backcover of Baumans Postmodern Ethics, Oxford: Blacwell, 1993

21. Cf. e.g. his "Soziologie der Moral" in Luhman & Stephan H Pfürtner: Theorietechnik und Moral, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1978 or "Ethik als Refleksionstheorie der Moral" in Luhman: Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik, Frankfurt a.M.: zxz, 1993, vol. 3

22. Cf. his Le crépuscule de devoir, Paris: Gallimard, 1992

23. See below, chapter zxz

24. Bauman: Modernity and the Holocaust, p. 171

25. See below, zxz.

26. Lukes, op.cit., p. 426 f.

27. Cf. Luhman: zxz

28. In Niklas Luhman and Stephan H. Pfürtner: Theorietechnik und moral, Frankfurt a.M., 1978. I will return to Luman below zxz

29. Piotr Sztompka: Sociología del cambio social, Madrid: Alianza, 1995, p. 229

30. Durkheim: De la division du travail social, Paris: Felix Alcan, 1893, p. i. There is an American translation from 1933, but it should be very "defective" (Lukes, op.cit., p. 576), and thus not worth crediting by refering to it. Hence, all translations are mine. Durkheim's low esteem is confirmed by Jones' characterisation of Durkheim's thesis as of "limited appeal to modern sociologists" (Robert Alun Jones: Emile Durkheim. An Introduction to Four Major Works, Newbury Park, Ca.: Sage, 1986, p.57)

31. Cf. Émile Durkheim: "Détermination du fait moral" (1906) in Durkheim: Sociologie et philosophie, Paris: Felix Alcan, 1924 (1951), where Durkheim refers to his more than twenty years of research on the subject.

32. Lukes, ibid., p. 413

33. Patrick Cingolani: "La pathologie sociale" in Gérard Namer & P. Cingolani: Morale et société, Paris: Meridiens Klincksieck, 1995, p. 54

34. Cf. Lukes, ibid., p. 54

35. Cf. Lukes, ibid., p. 402 f. & p. 406

36. Cf. ibid., p. 76 f., p. 55 ff. & p. 89 ff.

37. Jones, op.cit., p. 105 f.

38. Cf. Lukes, ibid., p. 402 ff. Like Jones I cannot help express my "admiration" (Jones, ibid., p. 9) for the thoroughness of Lukes' biography, which, as far as I can judge, contains leads to allmost all the angles necessary to understand the life and work of Durkheim.

39. Gurvitch: "La science des faits moraux et la morale théorique chez É. Durkheim" in Gurvitch: La vocation actuelle de la sociologie, 1950, p. 553; quoted from Lukes, ibid., p. 406 f.

40. Lukes, ibid., p. 409

41. See below zxz. The stress upon the fact that Durkheim indeed was a philosopher is partly due to a small polemic with Josep Picó, professor in sociology at the University of Valencia, Spain.

42. Durkheim himself, however, helped obscure this fact by omitting large parts of the ethical argumentation I present in the following from the second edition from 1902 (cf. José A. Prades: "L'expérience éthique chez Durkheim", Reseaux, 64-65-66, 1992, p. 165). The reason, however, was that in the mean time Durkheim had made a discovery which changed quite radically his views on morality. See below zxz.

43. Ibid., p. 160

44. Jones, op.cit., p. 157

45. Whether or not such a modern kind of sociologically inspired ethics, when "working together with a theory of knowledge and a theory of society" has to be "cynical" as the philosopher Ole Thyssen insists (cf. his I hinandens øjne, København: Gyldendal, 1995, p. 11), I will leave aside for the moment. Thyssen declares himself to be very much inspired by Niklas Luhman (cf. ibid.), and I will thus treat his claims in that connection. See chapter zxz below.

46. Prades, ibid., p. 156

47. Subscribing to the ideal of giving "an account which Durkheim might in principle have accepted as a description of what he was thinking and doing" (cf. Jones, op.cit., p. 8)

48. Durkheim, op.cit., p. 4

49. Ibid., p. 3

50. Ibid., p. 4

51. This very reasonable approach to solving a moral problem, quite in the scientific spirit of Durkheim, is quite typically not found worthy of mention by Jones, when he sums up the steps necessary to solve the problem as stated (cf. Jones, op.cit., p. 26).

52. Ibid., p. 15

53. It was this parallel to the ethical debates of our days which originally called my attention to the approach of Durkheim (cf. my "Festen i kollektivet", Interpol, Politiken, May 12th 1996, p. 10).

54. Durkheim, ibid., p. 8

55. Ibid. The french 'devoir' being both a verb ('ought') and a noun ('duty') makes a grammatical structure possible, which I have not been able to express completely in English.

56. Ibid., p. 9

57. Ibid.

58. Cf. above zxz

59. Durkheim, ibid., p. 13

60. Ibid., p. 14

61. This is precisely the meaning behind the fashionalble term 'risk society'; seen from the standpoint of calculating rationality, and with utility as the only value, acting is allways a risky thing! Cf. Beck and Luhman, zxz

62. Durkheim, ibid., p. 11

63. Ibid., p. 14

64. Ibid., p. 13

65. Ibid.

66. Ibid., p. 11

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid., p. 14

69. Ibid., p. 13

70. Ibid., p. 14

71. See above, chapterzxz

72. Durkheim, ibid., p. 6. In his critique of Kant Durkheim refers to Grundlegung der [sic!] Metaphysik der Sitten and Metaphysik der Sitten, 1st part, zxz 25 and 2nd part, zxz 30

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid., p. 7

75. Apparently Durkheim overlooked the important qualification of Kant, that human beings allways should be treated "as an end [...] and never only as a means" (cf. José Lui Villacañas: "Kant" in Camps, op.cit., vol. II, 1992, p. 363). If this is taken into consideration, it does not seem that Durkheim have much of an argument.

76. Durkheim, ibid., p. 7

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid., p. 6

79. Ibid., the page after the titlepage.

80. Boutroux: La contingence des lois de la nature, Paris, 1874; quoted from Lukes, op.cit., p. 57, which is also the main source of the present paragraph.

81. Lukes, ibid., p. 55

82. Ibid., p. 56

83. Renouvier: Science de la morale, Paris, 1869, vol. p. 14; cf. Lukes, ibid., p. 55

84. Cf. Lukes, ibid., p. 60

85. Fustel de Coulanges: Histoire des institutions politiques de l'ancienne France: la monarchie franque, Paris, 1888, p. 32 f.; cf. Lukes, ibid.

86. Lukes, ibid., p. 59

87. Lukes mentions various parallels between the works of the three mentioned and those of Durkheim, cf. Lukes, ibid., p. 54-65.

88. Cf. e.g. my "Er det gode liv et godt liv?", Social Kritik, 21, 1992

89. Durkheim: Le education moral (1925), Capital Federal, República Argentina: Schapire, 1972, p. 11

90. Of course one has to recognize the logic of institutional and intellectual inertia so vividly demonstrated by Kuhn in The Structure of Science (zxz ) and Feyerabend in Against Method (zxz ) with reference to the most prestigious of the so-called exact sciences, i.e. physics; but let us just suppose, for the sake of the game, that intellectual progress is in fact possible through research and argumentation. If not, why bother writing at all?! Cf. also my considerations on methodology, chapter zxz above.

91. Durkheim, ibid., p. 5

92. Ibid.

93. Ibid., p. 15

94. Ibid., p. 9 f.

95. This line of thought is directed against Paul Janet, responsible for the ethics of perfection. See below zxz

96. Ibid., p. 10

97. Ibid., p. 18

98. Ibid.

99. Ibid., p. 19

100. Ibid.

101. Ibid., p. 20

102. Ibid., p. 20

103. Cf. e.g. Henrik Wulff: Det samaritanske princip, zxz

104. See zxz

105. See above Hume Kant zxz

106. Cf. Lukes, op.cit., p. 67

107. For the utility of Weber's methodological deliberations concerning 'social action' within ethics, se below, chapter zxz

108. Cf. e.g. Ritzer: Teoría sociológica clasica, p. 13-19. I feel a little embarresed, however, refering to an author who reject an "extremely complicated and confuse" theory by the following remark: "The social world is very complex and to be able to understand it, relatively simple models are required." (Ibid., p. 445) But Ritzer is standard reading for students of sociology, at least at some universities in Denmark and Spain.

109. Cf. H. Gouhier: La Jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation du positivisme, Paris: Vrin, 1964, vol. II; quoted from Cingolani: "La pathologie sociale", op.cit., p. 21, which is also the main source of this paragraph.

110. Cingolani, ibid., p. 27

111. Bonald: Légilation primitive considérée dans les premiers temps par les seules lumières de la raison, suivie de plusieurs traités et discours politiques, Paris: A. Le Clère, 1802, vol. I, p. 44; cf. Cingolani, ibid., p. 22

112. Bonald: Recherces philosophiques sur les premiers objets des connaissances morales, Paris: A. Le Clère, 1818; cf. Cingolani, ibid.

113. Bonald: Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux dans la société civile, démontrée par le raisonnement et par l'historie (1796), Paris: A. Le Clère et Cie, 1843, vol. II, p. 430; cf. Cingolani, ibid.

114. Bonald, ibid., vol. I, p. 307; cf. Cingolani, ibid., p. 23

115. Cingolani, ibid., p. 25

116. Ibid.

117. Ibid., p. 24

118. Bonald: Démonstration philosophique du principe constitutif de la société, suive de méditations politiques tirées de l'Évangile, Paris: A. Le Clère, 1830; cf. Cingolani, ibid.

119. Bonald: Législation primitive, vol. I, p. 54; cf. Cingolani, ibid., p. 26

120. Cingolani, ibid., p. 25

121. Ibid.

122. Ibid., p. 26

123. Ibid., p. 27

124. Ibid., p. 23

125. Ibid., p. 28

126. Cf. ibid., p. 27

127. Cf. Lukes, op.cit., p. 66

128. Cf. determination of morality zxz below

129. Ibid.

130. Ibid., p. 20

131. Ibid., p. 10

132. Ibid., p. 15

133. Ibid., p. 16

134. Ibid., p. ii

135. Ibid., p. 17

136. Ibid., p. 16

137. See above, zxz

138. Durkheim, ibid., p. 19. However, as noted above, zxz apparently this was proposed allready by Renouvier. And nowadays "the absolute primacy of the ethical" is thought of as an idea characteristic of Lévinas (cf. e.g. Stéphane Mosès: "Gerechtigkeit und Gemeinschaft bei Emmanuel Lévinas" in Micha Brumlik and Hauke Brunkhorst (ed.): Gemeinschaft und Gerechtigkeit, Frankfurt a.M: Fischer, 1993, p. 364). Maybee just another example of obvious, but inconvenient ideas, which the institutional and ideological supremacy of science, i.e. the allegedly pure theoretical theory, excludes from mainstream history of thought and thus makes new and revolutionary, whenever they (re)appear every once in a while. I will return to Levinas below, chapter zxz.

139. Durkheim, ibid., p. iii

140. As quoted above, zxz.

141. Ibid., p. i

142. Ibid.

143. Ibid., p. iii f.

144. Ibid., p. iv

145. Ibid., p. 20

146. See below zxz

147. Ibid., p. 21

148. Durkheim, ibid., p. 19

149. Ibid., p. 16

150. Ibid., p. 15

151. Ibid., p. 18

152. Ibid., p. 22

153. Ibid., p. ii

154. Ibid, p. 21

155. Ibid., p. ii

156. Ibid., p. ii

157. Ibid., p. iii

158. Cf. Wundt: Ethik, eine Untersuchung det Tatsachen und Gesteze des sittlischen Lebens, Stuttgart, 1886; quoted in Durkheim, ibid., p. 21

159. Jones, op.cit., p. 54

160. Durkheim, ibid., p. iii

161. See above zxz

162. See above zxz

163. See also below zxz certainty

164. As was also the attitude of Durkheim's teacher, Fustel de Coulange. See above zxz

165. Patriotism is the prime virtue for Durkheim, zxz

166. See, for instance, Jean-Francois Fourny's interesting interpretation from this perspective of the intellectual development of André Breton and especially Georges Bataille (cf. Fourny: Introduction à la lecture de Georges Bataille, New York: Peter Lang, 1988

167. See above zxz

168. Durkheim, ibid., p. 22

169. Ibid., p. 23

170. Ibid.

171. Ibid., p. 24

172. See above zxz

173. See below, zxz. For the critique from Durkheim's comtemporaries, see Lukes, op.cit., p. 295 ff. and p. 493 ff.

174. Ibid.

175. The French word 'conscience' is, in English, equivalent to both 'consciousness' and 'conscience'. In this context, this is of course of the utmost importance, wherefore I have chosen to leave it untranslated whenever it occurs. Cf. also Lukes, op.cit., p. 4.

176. Durkheim, ibid.

177. Ibid., p. 25

178. Ibid.

179. Ibid.

180. See below zxz

181. See above zxz

182. See above zxz

183. See below zxz

184. See below, chapter zxz

185. The former has been the pre-ocuupation of especially Lévinas (cf. e.g. Bauman: Postmodern Ethics, p. 71 ff.), whereas the latter has been given special emphasis by Hans Jonas (cf. ibid., p. 217-22).

186. Cf. e.g. Peter Singer: The Widening Circle or the socalled "deep-ecology" of Arne Næs zxz

187. Emmanuel Levinas may be seen as trying to fullfill the ethical programme of a moral science thus interpreted with his analysises of specifik moral relations as for instance that between father and son (cf. Lévinas: Etik og Uendelighed, København: Hans Reitzel, 1995, p. 65 ff.).

188. See above zxz

189. Cf. Durkheim: La educación moral, p. 12

190. An understanding of morality which is also more in accordance with Montesquieu's of man as an essentially moral creature (cf. M.^a Carmen Iglesias: "Montesquieu" in Camps, op.cit., vol. II, p. 200), remembering that Durkheim wrote his latin theses about Montesquieu (cf. Lukes, op.cit., p. 278)

191. See below zxz

192. See above zxz

193. Durkheim, ibid., 25

194. Ibid., p. 26

195. Ibid.

196. Ibid.

197. Ibid., p. 27

198. Ibid.

199. Ibid.

200. Ibid., p. 28

201. See above zxz

202. Paris: Felix Alcan, 1927

203. Jones, op.cit., p. 77

204. Janet: Morale, p. 223; cf. Durkheim, ibid., p. 29

205. Durkheim, ibid.

206. janet, ibid., p. 239; cf. Durkheim, ibid., p. 30

207. Durkheim, ibid.

208. Ibid.

209. Ibid., p. 31

210. Ibid.

211. Ibid.

212. Ibid., p. 32

213. Ibid.

214. Confronted with Durkheim's thesis Janet is told to have thrown over the table and invoked on God for help (cf. Lukes, op.cit., p. 295).

215. Cf. above zxz.

216. Cf. zxz

217. See below zxz

218. See above zxz

219. Cf. above zxz

220. Ibid., p. iv

221. Ibid., p. 37

222. Ibid., p. 33

223. Ibid., p. 34

224. Ibid., p. 35

225. Ibid., p. 36 f.

226. Ibid., p. 37 f.

227. See above zxz

228. Ibid., p. 38

229. Ibid., p. 39

230. Ibid., p. 40

231. Ibid., p. 42

232. Cf. ibid., p. 43

233. Ibid., p. 43

234. Ibid.

235. See the previous paragraph. zxz

236. Ibid., p. 456 f.

237. See above zxz

238. See above zxz

239. See zxz.

240. In Durkheim: Sociologie et philosophie, op.cit., p. 49ff

241. Cf. Lukes, op.cit., p. zxz

242. See above, p. zxz

243. Durkheim: "La determination ...", p. 56

244. Cf. above zxz

245. [Durkheim, ibid., p. 57

246. [Ibid.

247. Cf. above zxz

248. [Durkheim, ibid., p. 58

249. Ibid.

250. Ibid., p. 70

251. Ibid., p. 55

252. [Ibid., p. 58

253. See zxz

254. Ibid., p. 59

255. [Ibid., 61

256. Ibid., p. 62

257. Durkheim: "Représentations individuelles et représentations collectives" in Sociologie et philosophie, op.cit., p. 47