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Lecture by Mr. Durkheim
4
A DEBATE WITH EMILE DURKHEIM *1
1904
Must sociology continue to be a philosophical speculation which encompasses social life in a
formula? Or, on the contrary, must it become fragmented into different sciences, and if it is to
specialize, how is this specialization to occur? Purely philosophical sociology is based entirely on
the idea that social phenomena are controlled by necessary laws. Social facts are linked by bonds that
human volition cannot arbitrarily break. This truth assumed an advanced mentality and could only be
the fruit of philosophical speculations. Sociology is the daughter of philosophical thought; it arose in
the heart of Comtean philosophy and is its logical crown.
But for Comte sociology does not consist in the plurality of definite problems that scholars study
separately, but is embodied in a single problem, and in order to perceive the law that dominates it as
a whole, sociology must embrace within an indivisible instant the course of historical development.
Detailed studies are dangerous, Comte said, because they distract the attention of the sociologist from
the fundamental problem which is the entirety of sociology. Social facts are solidaristic, and only by
profoundly altering their nature can one study them in isolation. All Comte’s disciples have done is to
reproduce the thought of their master, and the same formulas have been repeated without any advances
in sociology.
But why should sociology consist of a single problem? Social reality is essentially complex, not
unintelligible but just uncongenial to simple forms. Sociology is not a unitary science, and, even
while respecting the solidarity and interdependence of social facts, it must study each category
separately. But the conception that reduces sociology to a single and unique problem is still, even
among contemporary authors, the one most generally held. It is always a question of discovering the
general law of sociality. Since they are social, all the facts studied by the separate social sciences
supposedly have a common character, and the subject of sociology is the study of the social fact in
abstraction. By comparing social facts we shall see the elements found in all types and shall
distinguish the general characteristics of sociality. But where and how will this abstraction be
achieved? The given facts are concrete and complex; even the most inferior civilizations are
extremely complex. How can we extract the elementary fact, with its abstract characteristics, if we do
not begin by studying the concrete phenomena in which it is realized?
If sociology wants to live, then, it will have to reject the philosophical character that it owes to its
origin and approach the concrete realities via special research. It is desirable for the public to know
that sociology is not purely philosophical and that it requires precision and objectivity. But this is not
to say that in order to become truly sociological sciences the special disciplines need only remain
what they are already. They have not yet been adequately penetrated by the ideas brought to light by
social philosophy. They need to be transformed, to orient themselves in a more expressly sociological
direction. At the present time one can only pose the problem.
Lecture by Tarde
Should we speak of social science or of the social sciences? Sociology must be the science and not