Emile Durkheim, the Categories, and the Origins of Social Constructionism

Warren Schmaus. Rethinking Durkheim and His Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xii + 195 pp. $70.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-521-83816-0. Reviewed by Michael C. Behrent Published on H-Ideas (November, 2006) Few social theorists have been scrutinized as terpretative argument about Durkheim's theory of closely as Emile Durkheim. Yet while hundreds of the categories and a normative argument con‐ commentators have vetted his ideas over the past cerning the tenability of social constructionism, century, only in recent decades have the episte‐ Schmaus also makes an intriguing historical argu‐ mological dimensions of Durkheim's thought been ment concerning the origins of Durkheim's views extensively explored. As a number of new studies on the categories--or, to be precise, concerning the attest, this interest springs at least in part from error that he perceives lying at the origin of these the desire to assess an epistemological thesis so views. Schmaus's book is, in this sense, the fasci‐ influential that few working in the social sciences nating history of a misreading. As readers of The have not grappled with it at some level: namely, Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) know, the claim that reality is "socially constructed." Be‐ Durkheim, in his last major work, not only argued cause Durkheim argued that the most basic con‐ that religion is essentially a social phenomenon, cepts of human thought can best be explained so‐ but also that religion--and thus society?"are re‐ ciologically, he has often been considered as the sponsible for the very building blocks out of godfather of social constructionism. In Rethinking which human thought is formed. These blocks in‐ Durkheim and His Tradition, Warren Schmaus at‐ clude such notions as time, space, number, causal‐ tempts to weed out all that is untenable in social ity, and substance, which philosophers have tradi‐ constructionism through an examination of tionally labeled "the categories of the understand‐ Durkheim's thought. Contrary to what the title in‐ ing." (Unlike Immanuel Kant, Durkheim consid‐ dicates, Schmaus's book does not cover ered time and space to be categories, rather than Durkheim's oeuvre as a whole, but specifically what the German philosopher called "forms of in‐ considers his argument that the categories of hu‐ tuition."[1]) Schmaus's frst concern is purely his‐ man understanding are primarily social in char‐ torical: how did Durkheim come to think that the acter. What makes this book of interest to histori‐ categories of the understanding were social in ans of ideas is the fact that, while proposing an in‐ character? Schmaus addresses this question in H-Net Reviews two steps. In the frst place, he argues, we must through nineteenth-century French thought--ter‐ see Durkheim, who was trained as a philosopher ritory that, while increasingly familiar to intellec‐ before founding sociology as an autonomous dis‐ tual historians, remains largely uncharted in phi‐ cipline, as responding to a longer philosophical losophy departments. According to Schmaus, most tradition, which Schmaus considers in chapter 2. nineteenth-century French philosophers simply The frst philosopher to theorize categories was did not understand Kant: "many of Kant's subtle Aristotle. His categories referred to the highest distinctions were lost upon his earliest French in‐ genera, that is, the most general attributes that terpreters" (p. 52) who were "mystified by his no‐ could be predicated of an entity. Yet it was with tion of a transcendental logic" (p. 50). The source Immanuel Kant that modern thinking about the of this confusion lay in the exact meaning of categories truly began. For Kant, the categories re‐ Kant's transcendentalism: for many of his early ferred to the preconditions that logically had to readers, the contention that experience depends obtain for experience to be possible in the frst on necessary preconditions seemed to be an argu‐ place. However, as Schmaus explains in lucid and ment about the being in which those precondi‐ economical prose, Kant's theory is a response to tions were presumably located, making it a psy‐ the problem presented by David Hume's views on chological claim. Moreover, Kant's linking, in the the nature of causality. According to Hume, we transcendental deduction, of the categories to the never actually experience one thing causing an‐ essential unity of human consciousness, which he other: when we observe, for instance, two events called the "transcendental unity of apperception," occurring in rapid and regular succession, we in‐ appeared to justify this conclusion. Yet this read‐ fer a causal relationship that our senses have in ing of Kant, as Schmaus makes clear, is demon‐ fact never perceived. Kant responded to the chal‐ strably wrong. In the Prolegomena to Any Future lenge of Hume's skepticism by arguing, in a sec‐ Metaphysics (1783) and the second edition of the tion of his Critique of Pure Reason (1781) known First Critique (1787), Kant left no doubt that his as the transcendental deduction, that for an expe‐ was a purely logical argument concerning how rience even to occur, a number of concepts must universally valid judgments about experience are be presupposed. He dubbed these concepts "cate‐ possible. However, as Schmaus explains, the accu‐ gories of the understanding," and claimed there rate interpretation of Kant's transcendentalism as were twelve of them, among which was causality. a logical claim lagged behind the inaccurate un‐ While Hume had been right, Kant suggested, to derstanding of it as a psychological theory. Only say that we never perceive causes, he failed to re‐ with the German philosopher Hermann Cohen alize that they are logical prerequisites of experi‐ (1842-1918), in the latter part of the nineteenth ence. In this way, Kant's categories were critical to century, did a better reading begin to prevail. the Copernican Revolution that he effectuated in This particular misreading of Kant, Schmaus philosophy: henceforth, the main epistemological claims, had a decisive impact on Durkheim's problem would no longer be that of how the mind thought, via the influence of two prominent gains access to the external world, but that of how French thinkers examined in chapter 3--Victor the knowing mind shapes the external world. Cousin (1792-1867), the founder of a spiritualist Schmaus readily acknowledges that Kant's doctrine known as Eclecticism, and Pierre Maine thought harbored a number of ambiguities that de Biran (1766-1824), who was retroactively asso‐ would befuddle his readers. In chapter 3, ciated with Cousin's school. That Schmaus takes Schmaus begins to examine the history of the con‐ Cousin seriously at all, rather than confining him fusion that Kant's arguments engendered. To con‐ to his role as an intellectual power-broker (as his‐ nect Kant to Durkheim, Schmaus takes a detour torians, until recently, have done), is in itself re‐ 2 H-Net Reviews markable. More importantly, Schmaus demon‐ that would occupy a place of honor in his philo‐ strates with considerable skill why we should see sophical lexicon: that of representation. Cousin Cousin's psychological interpretation of Kant as had subscribed to Scottish "common sense" phi‐ something other than a "willful misreading" of losophy, which maintained that we perceive ex‐ him (p. 63). Like some of Kant's early German crit‐ ternal objects directly, rather than through the ics, Cousin believed that, rather than placing phi‐ mediations of a mental picture. Janet, an influen‐ losophy on a more secure basis, Kant had tial thinker who also wrote a philosophy textbook strengthened skepticism's hand. In Cousin's eyes, assigned by Durkheim, rehabilitated the older the apparent victory that the German thinker had view that, in addition to directly perceived ob‐ secured in claiming that the preconditions of ex‐ jects, the mind is also inhabited by representa‐ perience were not located in experience itself was tions, which make general ideas possible. Reject‐ won at the cost of declaring philosophy impotent ing realism (the belief that general ideas exist as to speak about what lay beyond the realm of ex‐ beings in their own right) as well as nominalism perience--the hazy world of what Kant called the (the claim that general ideas have no other con‐ noumena, or the "thing-in-itself." In particular, creteness than the particular objects to which Cousin feared the skeptical implications of Kant's they refer), Janet endorsed a form of conceptual‐ claim that we even experience our own selves as ism, the doctrine proposed by the twelfth-century mere appearances, rather than as things-in-them‐ philosopher Pierre Abelard, which holds that gen‐ selves. "I am conscious of the power to resist to a eral ideas exist, but only as representations ap‐ certain extent the forces external to mine," Cousin pearing in the minds of individuals. Janet's under‐ insisted. "What are all the arguments in the world standing of how general ideas work, according to in opposition to a fact like this?" (quoted, p. 67). Schmaus, inspired Durkheim to appeal to the idea Thus Cousin, Schmaus argues, ignored Kant's of representation to explain the function of collec‐ transcendentalism, offering in its place an "apper‐ tive beliefs. ception of willed effort" (p. 67), which maintains The central contention of Schmaus's historical that the self, through effortful activity and a ca‐ argument is that Durkheim appropriated the pacity to resist its surroundings, has immediate Eclectics' psychological framework for himself, knowledge of itself. Another exponent of the self yet transposed it onto the study of collective as willed effort was Maine de Biran, who invoked rather than individual phenomena. Schmaus it to explain how the mind frst comes to under‐ identifies two moments in this process, each cor‐ stand causality.

Load more