Inhabiting No-Man's Land

Durkheim and Modernity

Bibliographic Data

ID2404595
AuthorsMassimo Rosati (University of Salerno, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume8
Issue2
Pages233-261
Publication date2008-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Classical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1468-795X • E-ISSN: 1741-2897
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1468795x08088873
OpenAlexW2005486319
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited66

This article is a translation of the Editor's Introduction to the new Italian edition of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. In it, the author maintains that though The Elementary Forms does not suggest how the experience of the sacred could be publicly recovered by citizens of modern democracies, it nonetheless recommends that modernity must remain open, with both courage and humility, to radical self-assessment in light of the centrality of ritual and the sacred to social life. The tentative suggestions to this end in Durkheim's work - the cult of the individual, loyalty towards democratic political values - are the best solutions available to us, though they are part of a way of life that cannot be satisfied either with its present or with its desired state, even when the latter appears fully consistent with its own ideal aspirations. Thus, The Elementary Forms points to the continued need for a more substantial reconsideration of modern Western identity

Aesthetics · Centrality · Courage · Cult · Democracy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Humility · Loyalty · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Emile Durkheim and Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions

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