Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I The Concept of the Collective Consciousness of Society
- Part II The Form of the Collective Consciousness
- Part III Durkheim on Crime and Punishment
- Part IV Social Fact or Social Phenomenon? Durkheim's Concept of the Collective Consciousness as a ‘Social Fact’
- Part V Some Problems with Durkheim's Concept of the Common and Collective Consciousness
- Preface to Part V
- Introduction to Part V
- 17 Interdependence and the Division of Labour in Society
- 18 Durkheim on Socialism
- 19 Professional Ethics
- 20 Individualism, Durkheim and the Dreyfus Affair
- Conclusion to Part V
- Conclusion
- Appendix: On Paying a Debt to Society
- Notes
- References
- Index
19 - Professional Ethics
from Part V - Some Problems with Durkheim's Concept of the Common and Collective Consciousness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I The Concept of the Collective Consciousness of Society
- Part II The Form of the Collective Consciousness
- Part III Durkheim on Crime and Punishment
- Part IV Social Fact or Social Phenomenon? Durkheim's Concept of the Collective Consciousness as a ‘Social Fact’
- Part V Some Problems with Durkheim's Concept of the Common and Collective Consciousness
- Preface to Part V
- Introduction to Part V
- 17 Interdependence and the Division of Labour in Society
- 18 Durkheim on Socialism
- 19 Professional Ethics
- 20 Individualism, Durkheim and the Dreyfus Affair
- Conclusion to Part V
- Conclusion
- Appendix: On Paying a Debt to Society
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
If socialism then, other than in the severely restricted sense that Durkheim defined this concept, could not serve as the basis of a new collective consciousness for France, or any other industrial society for that matter, at the beginning of the twentieth century, what could? Was there something else – some other institution perhaps apart from state socialism – which could regulate social and especially economic life? In what sometimes seems like an increasingly desperate attempt to avoid having to concede to socialism the title of the new collective consciousness of industrial society, Durkheim tried to develop a new foundation for morality based on two other ideas that he wrote about extensively: his theory of the professions and his writings on human rights and individualism.
According to Robert Bellah, ‘Durkheim's most serious and comprehensive suggestion for social reform [was] the proposal for the establishment of professional groups, which would be developed considerably further in the preface to the second edition of The Division of Labour in 1902’ (1973, xxvii); and, citing Jean-Claude Filloux, he goes on to say that ‘it is clear that more generally the occupational group was Durkheim's alternative to socialism or rather, in the words of one recent French writer, Durkheim's socialism’ (xxx). While Marcel Mauss, in a footnote to the final page of Durkheim's book on Socialism, says that Durkheim's theory of professional groups, which was intended to lay the foundations for a new morality, was co-jointly inspired by social science and by socialism (1967, 285).
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- Émile Durkheim and the Collective Consciousness of Society , pp. 181 - 187Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2014