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Chapter 9 - Durkheim: Solidarity, Moral Facts, and Social Pathology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2022

Frederick Neuhouser
Affiliation:
Barnard College, Columbia University
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Summary

Chapter 9 explains Durkheim's understanding of moral facts and the conception of social solidarity at the core of his account of the division of labor's function in organized societies: crucial to what holds societies together and enables them to live are moral facts that inform relations among social members. Durkheim views human society as normatively constituted – governed by rules accepted as authoritative by social members – and claims that social institutions serve moral and not merely "useful" social functions. The chapter articulates the resources Durkheim has for conceiving of social pathology (itself an ethical phenomenon), examines the modern pathology most important to him, anomie, and coins a term for a related social pathology, hypernomie, a condition in which social rules are excessively rigid or constraining. Finally, the chapter reconstructs Durkheim's understanding of what is bad about social pathology – why social members should care whether their society is ill.

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Chapter
Information
Diagnosing Social Pathology
Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim
, pp. 192 - 228
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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