Emile Durkheim on Institutional Analysis by Emile Durkheim Mark Traugott

Author:Emile Durkheim, Mark Traugott [Emile Durkheim, Mark Traugott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226173719
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1994-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

9

REVIEW OF LUCIEN LEVY-BRUHL,*

Les Fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures

AND EMILE DURKHEIM,

Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse

We shall not now undertake a complete analysis and critique of the works published in the “Travaux de L’Année sociologique” collection. However, we must at least put forth in summary fashion their principal conclusions in order that our depiction of sociological activity over the last three years not be incomplete.

The aim of Levy-Bruhl’s book is to establish that human mentality does not exhibit the invariability which certain philosophers as well as the representatives of the anthropological school have attributed to it. Starting from the postulate that types of mentality must vary with types of society, he undertakes to establish the mental type which is peculiar to that poorly defined group of societies which are ordinarily termed “primitive”(inférieures). He is quite aware that because very different societies are subsumed under this rubric, the corresponding logical type will necessarily share the same relative indeterminacy. Proceeding in this way, we will only be able to obtain a very extensive genus which will contain a great number of distinct species. But, in the present state of research, only a preliminary attempt at a rough sketch is possible; only the future will render these results more precise.

According to Levy-Bruhl, what characterizes the primitive mentality is that it is essentially religious or, as the author puts it, mystical. Beings and things are represented in men’s minds as having properties very different from those which sensory observation reveals. The primitive everywhere sees occult powers and mysterious forces, the existence of which is not and cannot be established by any experiment; they are matters of faith, and experiments can no more serve to impugn this faith than they can serve to demonstrate its validity. Moreover, it is characteristic of this mentality to be refractory to any experimental proof.

In that respect, the primitive mind is clearly differentiated from our own. The way in which it interrelates its ideas is no less specific, but its logic is not our own. The former is dominated by what Levy-Bruhl calls the law of participation. He formulates it as follows: “In the collective representations of the primitive mentality, objects, beings, and phenomena may be, in a way which is incomprehensible to us, at the same time themselves and something other than themselves. In a no less incomprehensible way, they give off and take on mystical forces, virtues, qualities and actions and make them felt outside themselves without ceasing to be where they are.”1 In a word, primitive thought does not obey the principle of contradiction, and that is why Levy-Bruhl terms it prelogical.

Having thus defined this mentality, Levy-Bruhl shows how it permits us to explain certain peculiarities of language, of enumeration, and of institutions specific to these kinds of societies.2

The work I have published on The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life naturally led me to pose questions which border upon or are related to those above; for primitive religions cannot be understood unless one studies the mentality of the peoples who practice them.

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