Abstract
In the first place, I discuss the main papers and books on Durkheim published in recent years, where no attention is given to the phenomenological interpretations of his work. Then I expose different phenomenological readings of Durkheim, some of them positive (for instance, Tyriakian’s), some negative (Monnerot and others), some ambivalent (like Schutz’s). Later I find that there is in Durkheim an implicit practice of phenomenology, inspired by Descartes’ Meditations on first philosophy. Consequently, I support Tyriakian’s thesis that there is in Durkheim an implicit phenomenological approach, despite his positivism. Then I wonder whether this tacit approach produces a phenomenological ontology of the social world. I find that it actually does, especially in what regards to social facts considered as things. I argue that Durkheim’s conception of social things is consistent with Husserl’s notion of ideal objectivities. I conclude that Durkheim’s rule of considering social facts as things is part of his phenomenological legacy and that it does not contradict the idea that they also are “states lived”.
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Notes
According to Michel Henry, “reality is not ‘economic,’ which means that both the objective structures of Economy and their allegedly autonomous laws have their ultimate founding outside the economy, in the living individual; thus, such laws are subject to his fate and to the immanent law that transforms, in the individual, his needs into action and satisfaction” (Lipsitz 2012: 140).
In other words: “society has no reality of itself, a specific or different one from that of the individuals, since the only reality is life in its irreducible nature” (Paredes-Martín 2011: 105).
On the Schutz–Ortega relation, see Nasu (2009: 271–289).
See also Caygill (2002: 9f.).
See also Tiryakian (2009).
As Larrabee recalls, the method of static phenomenology can be summarized in two principles: “(1) Guide the analysis by the use of a ‘transcendental clue’ in the form of an object which is pregiven and therefore is a finished unity embodying a certain sense (Sinn); and (2) Carry out a series of correlation analyses which trace on the side of the object its various levels and on the side of consciousness the corresponding levels of conscious acts” (Larrabee 1976: 164).
Husserl’s “radical approach”—which expresses his most elaborated position on this matter- would restructure the elements of static and genetic methods into a single method; the latter would integrate into genetic method those elements from static method which have both methodological and phenomenological validity and do not involve essential distortion. […] We shall call this new analysis ‘static/genetic’ analysis to signify the integration of the viable elements of static phenomenology into genetic phenomenology. This new static/genetic method is the only feasible solution to the difficulties inherent in the complete distinction of the static and genetic phenomenology of perception and related phenomena” (Larrabee 1976: 171).
Although a distinction must be made here. Durkheim practices genetic phenomenology in a limited way since he does not traces the genetic history of the monad itself nor does he carries his “investigations into the ultimate levels of consciousness, those of inner time-consciousness, the ‘obscure depths’ which were omitted in the static analysis” in order to account for “all characteristics of conscious experience” (Larrabee 1976: 164).
I’m indebted to Nisashi Nasu, who made me notice that, in genetic perspective, the historical must be distinguished from the eidetic. Both layers coexist in Durkheim. On the one side, he sketches out a brief history of religions, by describing how different kinds of cults followed one after the other. On the other side, this history is structured in strict order from the complex to the simple, elemental. Therefore, history has its logic. So, in Durkheim, the eidetic and the historic are articulated, just like in Husserl’s Crisis… (2009) when he accounts for history not as it has occurred but as it would have occurred.
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Belvedere, C. Durkheim as the Founding Father of Phenomenological Sociology. Hum Stud 38, 369–390 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-015-9357-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-015-9357-1