Maniacal suicide. βThis is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.
Emile DurkheimRead
Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the second are determined modes of action.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Durkheim categorizes religious phenomena into beliefs, which are opinions, and rites, which are actions.
Emile Durkheim's quote illustrates his perspective on religion, dividing it into two essential components: beliefs and rites. Beliefs refer to the opinions and representations that individuals hold about the sacred and the divine, while rites are the expressions and actions that embody those beliefs in the form of communal practices. This distinction underscores the interplay between thought and action in religious life and highlights how religion influences both personal and collective behavior.
Themes
ReligionBeliefsRitesOpinionAction
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on sociology, one might use this quote to discuss Durkheim's contributions.
More from Emile Durkheim
All quotes βMan cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.
Emile DurkheimRead
If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
Emile DurkheimRead
A person is not merely a single subject distinguished from all the others. It is especially a being to which is attributed a relative autonomy in relation to the environment with which it is most immediately in contact.
Emile DurkheimRead
The roles of art, morality, religion, political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor to provide sound functioning of the organs. All this supraphysical life is built and expanded not because of the demands of the cosmic environment but because of the demands of the social environment.
Emile DurkheimRead
A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.
Emile DurkheimRead
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