The Rules of Sociological


particular phenomena, different from individual human facts



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Durkheim Emile The Rules of Sociological Method 1982


particular phenomena, different from individual human facts. 
Should we attribute common characteristics whose cause escapes 
us to a 
Volksgeist 
or· 
Sozialpsyche 
distinct from individuals?' 
DURKHEIM: 
That question does not seem to me to come into the 
one with which we are dealing. Doubtless Seignobos appears to 
believe that the collective consciousness has been dreamed up as a 
way of explaining the unconscious in history. That is inexact. 
Firstly, one can admit that the unconscious exists, and yet deny 
any collective consciousness; the unconscious can be. entirely 
individual. Then, if there is a collective consciousness, it must 
include conscious facts and account for them, as well as uncon­
scious facts. For, after all, since it is. a consciousness (provided we 
suppose it exists), it must indeed be conscious in some respects. 


Debate on Explanation in History and Sociology (1908) 
221 
SElGNOBOS: 
How then? I would indeed like to know where is 
located the place where the collectivity thinks consciously. 
DURKHEIM : 
I have no need to tackle here the question of the 
collective consciousness, which goes far beyond the subject with 
which we are dealing. All I would say is that, if we admit the 
existence of a collective consciousness, we have not dreamed it up 
with the aim of explaining the unconscious. We thought we had 
discovered certain characteristic phenomena absolutely different 
from phenomena of individual psychology and it is by this route 
that we have been led to the hypothesis that you are attacking here 
- I hardly know why. 
LALANDE: 
Yet it does seem that the two questions are linked: the 
solution of the first can depend on the solution to the second. If it 
.is true that there exists a collective social spirit, does that not rule, 
out the method which consists in seeking the explanation of 
historical facts in the motives of the participants and in the 
consciousness they have of them? The only legitimate method 
would then be, as Durkheim thinks, to site onself at an objective 
viewpoint, to compare series and arrive at laws by discovering that 
events repeat 'themselves. 

DURKHEIM: 
I have not come here to expound my own method but 
to discuss the one Seignobos is proposing to us. But I would like to 
know for what reason he denies us the right to establish compari­
sons between historical fa�ts. 
SElGNOBOS: 
In the positive sciences the elements are analogous and 
are precisely known, they are homogeneous and exact, so that one 
can then compare series of phenomena (well defined chemical 
substances). In history, on the other hand, what we are comparing 
are quite simply things that are called or have been called the 
same, and such an identity of designation may be a purely verbal 
one. That 
is 
why I say that psychological phenomena are not 
comparable to one another. On the contrary, when by chance we 
are dealing with physical or physiological phenomena, comparison 
becomes possible. Thus the family can doubtless be studied more 
easily than other phenomena. 
DURKHEIM: 
I must confess that I experience astonishment when I 
hear enunciated as self-evident a proposition which seems to me to 


222 
Writings of Durkheim on Sociology and its Method 
be contradicted by all that I know about it. The starting point of 
domestic evolution · is in no way physical. The greater part of 
family phenomena, as they have come down to us, do not seem to 
flow from the act of procreation. Procreation is not the central and 
constituting act for the family. The family is often a grouping of 
people who are not even united by the ties of blood (the element 
of blood relationship is often very small). 
SEIGNOBOS: 
But that is precisely why we no longer call such a 
grouping a family. Historically a family is made up of elements' 
related by blood. 

BtoCHE: 
But take the'Y€V071in Greece. It has not been at all proved 
that it was made up of elements related by blood, nor that it owed 
its origins to consanguinuity. 


LACOMBE: 
The essential fact which classes you as a member of the 
family is the fact of 
co-operation. 
When the son leaves the father, 
when he no longer co-operates with him, he is no longer in the 
family, he even loses his right to inherit. On the contrary, he who 
has been received and allowed to co-operate, by this very fact 
enters the family. So, in the Middle Ages, when a man with no 
blood relationship shared hearth and board, he became a co­
inheritor. 
SEIGNOBOS : 
This discussion shows, better than I would have been 
able to do, the entire difficulty we have in agreeing in history, even 
about the most common and apparently the most clear ideas. For, 
after all, who can prove to me that the Greek 'YevD11 can be 
assimilated to the family in the sense that we understand the word? 
BtoCH: 
You say that it is not proved. But, if the Greek'YeP017 is not 
the family in the present meaning of the word, one can at least 
allow that it takes the place of it and that it has been conceived of 
in imitation of the family. 
DURKHEIM: 
Or conversely, that the limited family of today has 
been conceived of in imitation of the 'YeP017' 
BLOCH : 
I am really frightened at the scepticism of Seignobos. If one . 
listens to him, what would remain of history? Almost nothing. 
But, from another viewpoint, I think, contrary to Durkheim, that 
. there is a profound distinction to be drawn between the methods 
capable of being used in history and those of the other sciences. 


Debate on Explanation in History and Sociology (1908) 223 
We must study historical phenomena as they have been given to us 
once and for all, for, whatever we may do, we shall never succeed 
in repeating them. Hence the difficulty that we have in history, in 
formulating laws, and the impossibility of admitting, as does 
Durkheim, that causes are identifiable with laws. That is true in 
the other sciences but here, as repetition is impossible, since we 
cannot isolate what is essential from what is peripheral, things are 
different. 
We shall perhaps be able to enunciate laws, so long as they 
concern very simple and crud.e historical facts (such as, for 
example, the facts of human geography) but we must abandon the 
attempt as soon as we touch upon so various and complex 
psychological facts. 
DURKHEIM : 
Then we must also give up formulating causal rela­
tionships. 
BOUGL�: 
Like Durkheim, I think that every causal explanation, in 
order really to be an explanation, cannot fail to refer to laws. 
It is true that historians very often believe that they are 
explaining certain phenomena by the causes alone, having left laws 
out of account. This merely means that they leave obscure and 
without spelling them out the laws on which their assertions rely. 
Sometimes, however, they formulate laws in spite of them­
selves; they are thus caught in the act of being sociologists. Thus 
recently, in a book by Bloch, I came across this general proposi­
tion concerning the remnants of client peoples who survived in 
. ancient Gaul: The regime of 'protection' 'is imposed and pre­
dominates every time that ,the state shows itself to be unequal to its 
task, namely incapable of ensuring the security of individuals, 
either because it has not yet fully constituted itself or because it 
has already begun to break up'. Examples of this kind could be 
multiplied. They tend to prove that one cannot explain without 
invoking laws. 
BLOCH: 
This is indeed an insuperable tendency which the historian 
resists with difficulty, but it only shows that we should be more 
prudent and hedge our assertions round with more reservations 
than we do. 
DURKHEIM: 
In the end I believe I am in agreement with Bloch, on 
condition that we distinguish between two things that are utterly 


224 
Writings of Durkheim on Sociology and its Method 
different and which the historian of modern times does not 
distinguish between sufficiently: (1) historical events, and 
(2) 
permanent social functions. So far as events are concerned, we are 
presented with an indefinite mountain of facts, 
in 
whose midst the 
mind 
elm 
only introduce with difficulty some scientific order. I 
admire the historians who can live comfortably amid this pile of 
disordered events. 

But beyond the events, there are the functions, the institutions, 
the ways,- fixed and organised, of thinking and acting. In that 
domain comparisons become possible: instead of being over 
whelmed by the extreme diversity of the given facts, one is soon 
struck by the very limited number of types, by the kind of 
impoverishment· manifest when the same function is studied in 
different peoples or in different eras. Up to now I have only been 
able to carry this out for types of family, but I have noted, through 
the ages, a/very small number of distinct types. And a type of 
family is solidly linked to the whole social organisation. Thus it 
must be roughly the case for the other functions which, together 
make up the collectivity. It is true that 

have not been able to 
study' every society and I have had to eliminate and leave many 
facts out of account. But it is nevertheless striking how one can 
co-ordinate and reduce to a few large but very simple forms the 
family institutions of a great number of peoples. Their identity is 
extremely remarkable and well shows up the possibility of a true 
historical science. For other functions doubtless the task would be 
more complex, but the difficulties do not appear to be insuperable. 
In any case the historian has the right and the duty to undertake, 
this work, instead of giving up in despair. 
SEIGNOBOS: 
Unfortunately there is a fundamental difficulty which 
makes sucq attempts singularly hazardous: it is that we have no 
method of constructing really precise categories that are compara­
ble; we never know exactly what we are comparing. Such juxta­
positions may be ingenious and suggestive, but there is nothing at 
all scientific about them. 
LACOMBE: 
This is because you are too demanding or too ambi�ious, 
you are always wanting to compare large masses of facts and 
events with each other. We should begin by analysing and 
comparing fragments. For instance, I propose to show the similar 
repercussions caused in different times and place by the same type 
of land cultivation. 


Debate on Explanation in History and Sociology (1908) 225 
SEIGNOBOS : 
Clearly there are simpler phenomena, for· which a 
fairly restricted number of combinations are possible (for exam­
ple, family organisation). But if we take political life or languages, 
here there is no longer anything save indeterminateness. 
BOUGLE: 
But in the study of languages they have succeeded 
precisely in distinguishing laws and establishing meaningful rela­
tionships. 
SEIGNOBOS: 
They have hardly discovered more than the laws of 
phonetics, and even then because there was a physiological 
underpinning which allowed the use of experimental methods, and 
even graphical ones. 


DURKHEIM : 
On the contrary, many linguists believe that one might 
with advantage introduce a sociological viewpoint into the study of 
languages. 

SEIGNOBOS: 
But that can only bring obscurity into them. What can 
we understand about the social mechanism of ancient collec­
tivities? Very little, and then solely by means of analogies with our 
society today. 
DURKHEIM : 
It seems to me on �e other hand that we understand 
Australian (aboriginal) societies much better than our own. 
SEIGNOBOS: 
We don't mean the same thing by the word 'under­
stand'. For my part, it seems that we understand much better 
present-day societies than Australian ones. It is probably a ques­
tion of imagination. I only regret that we do not succeed in 
studying directly the question of the unconscious. 
BOUGLE: 
But you seem to persist in believing that the unconscious 
can be assimilated to the unknown. Why do you refuse to apply to 
unconscious motives the research procedures that you apply to 
conscious motives? The bases of your research are the same, the 
reasoning processes that you employ to induce the causes of 
actions and events are as valid for unconscious causes as for the 
others. 
SEIGNOBOS: 
That's not so. When unconscious motives are in 
question I can find out nothing. I draw a blank. 
BOUGLE: 
If you'll pardon me, our personal experience reveals to us 
equally well both unconscious and conscious motives. Does it not 


226 
Writings of Durkheim on Sociology and its Methods 
teach us that many of our actions can only be explained by causes 
which, at ·the moment. the action occurs, did not occur to our 
consciousness at all? We are continally perceiving after the event 
the motives·of an action which had escaped us. Thus we can just as 
well discover in the past cases of unconscious motivation' as cases 
of conscious motivation. 
SEIGNOBOS : 
Not so, because the experiences that you are talking 
about are not set down in the documents which relate the events 
and their apparent causes . .
BOUGLE: 
But the unconscious causes are just as much - or just as 
little - to be found in the documents as the conscious causes. In 
both cases you don't just transcribe the document, you try to 
understand and reconstruct the state of mind of its author. Take 
Livy's history. I think that the unconscious motives which direct 
him are to be read just as easily as the conscious and apparent 
ones. 
SEIGNOBOS: 
I haven't much faith in the possibility of reconstituting 
in this way the psychology of individuals or of groups. 
LACOMBE: 
What in the world then impels you to write history? 
SEIGNOBOS: 
To seek out relationships between series of facts and to 
undeIStand the past according to the mo�el of the present day. 
LACOMBE: 
But behind the facts what we are always looking for is 
Man; agreed, this is very difficult, but the purpose is always to 
succeed in revealing the psychological mechanism of actions and 
events. 
SEIGNOBOS: 
My purpose, very simply, is to explain, if that be 
possible, by what chain of well-connected events we have arrived 
at the present state. And in that exp�anation I am disposed to 
attribute very great importance to the motives expressed by the 
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