Durkheim and the liberal tradition

Giovanni Paoletti

Chapter 4 in The Elgar Companion to Émile Durkheim, 2026, pp 58-80 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter reconsiders Émile Durkheim's intellectual affiliation, challenging the influential thesis that situates him in the conservative tradition. While Durkheim shares some assumptions with conservative thinkers, such as concern over social atomization and support for intermediate groups, this study argues that his intellectual roots lie closer to the 19th-century French liberal tradition. Through an analysis of Durkheim's genealogies of sociology, his interpretation of the French Revolution, and his sociology of individualism, the chapter highlights Durkheim's commitment to values such as individual rights, rationalism, and democracy and shows by textual evidence that his conception of society aligns closely with a liberal framework rooted in moral individualism and complex rationalism, within a lineage that includes thinkers like Constant, Tocqueville, or Guizot. This reinterpretation invites a broader reflection on the historiographical and conceptual boundaries of political traditions in modern social theory.

Keywords: Liberalism; French Revolution; Moral Individualism; Rationalism; Robert Nisbet; Benjamin Constant (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035322923
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035322930.00010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22860_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().