Marx and Durkheim on Religion
Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim, two of the most important social critics of the modern world, agree on very little about the functions and goals of religion and its place in modern societies. The one clear overlap in their assessments of religion is that it is immensely important and that no important critique of society can be complete without an examination of religion. This paper explores the approach that each of these theoreticians took in regards to an understanding of how religion functions.
Durkheim and Marx were historical contemporaries, and so it is in no way surprising that they should be interested in many of the same social issues. However, their personal circumstances and personal philosophies were sufficiently different that there is no possible way in which one could ever confuse the two. Durkheim (1858-1917) was in many ways the scion of the Encyclopedists and other French philosophers of the Enlightenment. Although he clearly had certain ideas about how society should work (that is, he was to some extent a prescriptive scholar), he was mostly concerned with how society does work. This latter approach is a descriptive one.
One of Durkheim's major concerns was that sociology be recognized as a legitimate science, something that could be applied with the same rigor as chemistry or biology. This is still a concern in the discipline, although there are differences of opinion today on whether this should remain a serious question. This emphasis on sociology as science pushed Durkheim toward the practice of sociology as descriptive.
Durkheim wanted sociologists to observe society accurately and carefully in the same way that a biologist did (Poggi, 2000, p. 3). Because...
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