Abstract

The essay moves from the tension between society and humanity, to that between nationalism and cosmopolitism, in order to discuss the sociological concept of the State according to Emile Durkheim. The author criticizes Pierre Bourdieu who maintains that the Durkheimian State was only the expression of the French republican society at the end of the nineteenth century. The State should be considered for Durkheim instead as the organized expression of the authority existing in every society. Unlike what happens in modern political theory, in particular, in Hobbes and Rousseau, the sociological State is not the sum of the forces, but rather the result of a mental process that links individuals to their state organization. Precisely for this reason the state is “the organ of social thought,” which allows subsequent deliberations through the mediation between rulers and ruled, without presupposing individuals but continuously producing the environment of their action.