The elementary forms of religious life
Émile Durkheim (Author), Karen E. Fields (Translator)
"Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), founder of the French school of sociology, produced an astonishing array of books and articles. He wrote both empirical studies and abstract treatises, most famously in his books on suicide and on the division of labor. But his last and greatest book, on a topic of utmost importance, is far less well known in the English-speaking world. Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, published in 1912, received a hasty translation in 1915 that has remained, until now, the only English version available. In this now-classic work, Durkheim analyzes religion into its most fundamental beliefs and rites, including: sacredness, the soul, spirits, and gods; asceticism, sacrifice, communion, and mourning. Through an examination of the world these elements constitute, he is able to argue that religion originates in social life and in the most fundamental capacities of human intellect. His analysis is a model of rich comparison, analytic clarity, and open-minded inquiry. The 1915 translation, by Joseph Ward Swain, was first published in the United States by The Free Press in 1954. At long last, sociologist and religious scholar Karen Fields offers a much-needed new translation, with an illuminating introduction, that will restore Durkheim's work to its original brilliance and gain the respect accorded the very best translations of other key works by this author. At the end of our century, as so many people ask fundamental questions about the sacred, and as social science itself faces a methodological crisis of confidence, there can be no better source of answers, as well as models of analysis, than Durkheim's text."--Jacket
lxiii, 464 pages : map ; 25 cm
9780029079362, 9780029079379, 0029079365, 0029079373
31605085
Translator's introduction: Religion as an eminently social thing
Introduction: Subject of the study: religious sociology and the theory of knowledge
Book one: Preliminary questions. Definition of religious phenomena and of religion ; The leading conceptions of the elementary religion: animism ; The leading conceptions of the elementary religion (continuation): naturism ; Totemism as elementary religion: review of the question ; method of treating it
Book two: The elementary beliefs. The principal totemic beliefs: the totem as name and as emblem ; The principal totemic beliefs (continued): the totemic animal and man ; The principal totemic beliefs (continued): the cosmological system of totemism and the notion of kind ; The principal totemic beliefs (end): the individual totem and the sexual totem ; Origins of these beliefs: critical examination of the theories ; Origins of these beliefs (continued): the notion of totemic principle, or mana, and the idea of force ; Origins of these beliefs (conclusion): origin of the notion of totemic principle, or mana ; The notion of soul ; The notion of spirits and gods
Book III. The principal modes of ritual conduct. The negative cult and its functions: the ascetic rites ; The positive cult: the elements of the sacrifice ; The positive cult (continuation): mimetic rites and the principle of causality ; The positive cult (continuation): representative or commemorative rites ; The piacular rites and the ambiguity of the notion of the sacred
Originally published by F. Alcan in 1912
Ethnographic map of Australia on endpapers
Translation of: Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse
Translated into English from original French