To move from Marx to Durkheim is not only to move from an earlier to a later generation of social thinkers; it is also to effect a major change in institutional context and intellectual tradition. Of the three writers discussed in this book, Durkheim was the least directly involved on a personal level in the great political events of his time: virtually all of his works are wholly academic in character, and consequently are far less scattered – and less propagandist – than many of those of Marx or Weber. Moreover, the intellectual influences which were most important in contributing to Durkheim's theoretical outlook are more homogeneous and easy to specify than those moulding the work of the other two authors.

The significant influences over Durkheim's mature intellectual position come from within distinctly French intellectual traditions. The overlapping interpretations which Saint-Simon and Comte offered of the decline of feudalism and the emergence of the modern form of society constitute the principal foundation for the whole of Durkheim's writings. Indeed, it could be said that the main theme in Durkheim's life's work is concerned with the reconciliation of Comte's conception of the ‘positive’ stage of society with Saint-Simon's partly variant exposition of the characteristics of ‘industrialism’. Other influences from an earlier generation are those of Montesquieu and Rousseau; to these, Durkheim conjoined the contemporary teachings of Renouvier, and at the Ecole Normale where Durkheim studied from 1879 to 1882, those of his professors Boutroux and Fustei de Coulanges.