The horizon is generally conspicuous, whereas the surrounding landscape, close to us, is taken for granted. Yet, in the social and historical world (and perhaps in some measure in the physical world also), the horizon we perceive depends on our more immediate environment and its general features. A forest or a savannah, a local hillock or a hollow, make a great difference to the kind of skyline that is seen. But it is in the nature of things that what is close and familiar should also be treated with familiarity and contempt, and that its importance should normally be ignored. It is its ordinariness, obviousness, which causes us to take it for granted: but the hold it has over us is immeasurably strengthened precisely by the fact that we do take it for granted. What is noticed can be queried, but that which seems utterly obvious eludes questioning. The horizon, by contrast, errs in the opposite direction. It is often quite spuriously dramatic. If you walk to the point on the distant skyline, you may well find, when you reach it, that it is just as ordinary a place as your starting point. But as long as it remains on the skyline, it occupies the dramatic point at which the sky meets land or water, the point where the sun sets or rises. It has a striking suggestiveness, and symbolises our deeper or more ecstatic aspirations—quite unlike the close and dusty immediate locality, which tends instead to remind us of our compromises, shabbiness and mediocrity.

Durkheim's manner of thought and his style of expression have certain peculiar features the recognition of which can only clarify the interpretation of his ideas. First, there are certain concepts crucial to the understanding of his thought which need to be elucidated, either because they are ambiguous or because they are unfamiliar to a modern reader. Second, underlying these concepts, there are a number of sharp dichotomies, or “binary oppositions”, on which his thought rests, which need to be made explicit and related to one another. Third, there are a number of characteristic, and often bad, arguments, which likewise need to be brought to the surface and identified. And finally, Durkheim's style often tends to caricature his thought. He often expressed his ideas in an extreme or figurative manner, which distorted their meaning and concealed their significance: hence the relation between his style and his thought must be considered. It is to these matters that this article is devoted.

During his life-time, Durkheim's methodological writings were notoriously subject to controversy, and his ‘sociologism’ was widely condemned. These early critiques, often totally misinformed as to the real character of Durkheim's views, have long since ceded place to critical interpretations of Durkheim's writings which are founded upon a more adequate understanding of the themes and the dilemmas inherent in his sociology. Nonetheless, it is arguable that we still await a treatment which fully explores the strengths and weaknesses of Durkheim's method. One main reason for this is that most secondary interpreters of Durkheim have failed to connect his analytical discussion (and rejection) of individualism as a methodological approach to social theory with his developmental conception of the emergence of individualism as a morality brought into being by the growth of the differentiated division of labour. It is commonly accepted-and, indeed, he himself stressed this very strongly-that Durkheim's methodological ideas must be evaluated in relation to their concrete implementation in his more empirical works. But this is generally taken to mean showing how successfully or otherwise he ‘applied’ his methodological views in his other studies. The point I wish to make in this paper is that there is a reciprocal relationship between Durkheim's substantive discussion of the development of individualism and his abstract formulations of sociological method. Durkheim is often regarded as being fervently “anti-individualist”. But in fact his works contain a vigorous defence of individualism—understood in a specific way. In other words, Durkheim's writings represent an attempt to detach “liberal individualism”, regarded as a conception of the characteristics of the modern social order, from “methodological individualism”.

In the Preface to the second edition of Les régies de la methode sociologique (1901) Émile Durkheim defined sociology as “the science of institutions, of their genesis and functioning” (R XXII). In the same text, however, he stated:

In the present state of the discipline, we really do not even know what are the major social institutions, such as the state or the family, the right of property, or contract, punishment and responsibility. We ignore almost entirely the causes on which they depend, the functions they fulfil, the laws of their evolution; we barely begin to perceive some light on a few of these points (R xv).