The ideal of the person

Recovering the novelty of Durkheim’s sociology. Part II: Modern society, the cult of the person, and the sociological project

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12697358
AutoresFrancesco Callegaro (EHESS, France, autor correspondente)
Ano2013
Volume16
Fascículo1
Páginas37-52
Data de publicação2013-11-20
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Classical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1468-795X • E-ISSN: 1741-2897
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1468795x13497128
OpenAlexW2326029283
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas14

The aim of this article is to clarify the difference between the anthropological category of the person, as analyzed in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), and the modern ideal of a free autonomous person, which had been at the center of Durkheim’s sociological project since The Division of Social Labor (1893). After explaining the need to return to a sociological perspective, the article considers Durkheim’s examination of the transformations implied by the modern cult of the person in the practical and intellectual organization of social practices. The modern ideal constitutes morality as a social fact, requiring a new form of moral education, as a first step toward a wider political transformation, based on social aspirations to justice that it is the task of sociology to explain, understand, and help realize. This practical commitment opens the way to an understanding of sociology’s original place in the modern epistemological discussion and, consequently, to an appreciation of the novelty Durkheim achieved in founding the French School of Sociology

Cult · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Medical sociology · Morality · Politics · Social geometry · Social science · Sociological imagination · Sociological theory · Sociology · Education, sociology, and vocational training · Emile Durkheim and Sociology · Law · Philosophical and Theoretical Analysis · Philosophy