Emile
Durkheim
definition
of Religion
“The
Elementary Forms of the Religious Life”
Sociology
of Religion
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ
Religious
phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs
and rites.
The beliefs
are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the rites are determined modes of
action. Between these two classes of facts there is all the difference which
separates thought from action.
The rites
can be defined and distinguished from other human practices, moral practices,
for example, only by the special nature of their object. A moral rule
prescribes certain manners of acting to us, just as a rite does, but which are
addressed to a different class of objects. So it is the object of the rite
which must be characterized, if we are to characterize the rite itself. Now it
is in the beliefs that the special nature of this object is expressed. It is
possible to define the rite only after we have defined the belief.
All known religious
beliefs, whether simple or complex, present one common
characteristic: they presuppose a classification of all the things, real and
ideal, of which men think, into two classes or opposed groups, generally
designated by two distinct terms which are translated well enough by the words profane and sacred
[profane, sacré).
This division
of the world into two domains, the one containing all that is sacred, the other
all that is profane, is the distinctive trait of religious thought; the
beliefs, myths, dogmas and legends are either representations or systems of
representations which express the nature of sacred things, the virtues and
powers which are attributed to them, or their relations with each other and
with profane things.
But by sacred things
one must not understand simply those personal beings which are called gods or
spirits; a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a
word, anything can be sacred. A rite can have this character; in fact, the rite
does not exist which does not have it to a certain degree. There are words,
expressions and formulae which can be pronounced only by the mouths of
consecrated persons; there are gestures and movements which everybody cannot
perform. If the Vedic sacrifice has had such an efficacy that, according to
mythology, it was the creator of the gods, and not merely a means of winning
their favour, it is because it possessed a virtue comparable to that of the
most sacred beings.
The circle of
sacred objects cannot be determined, then, once for all. Its extent varies
infinitely, according to the different religions. That is how Buddhism is a
religion: in default of gods, it admits the existence of sacred things, namely,
the four noble truths and the practices derived from them.
Up to the
present we have confined ourselves to enumerating a certain number of sacred
things as examples: we must now show by what general characteristics they are
to be distinguished from profane things.
One might be
tempted, first of all, to define them by the place they are generally assigned
in the hierarchy of things. They are naturally considered superior in dignity
and power to profane things, and particularly to man, when he is only a man and
has nothing sacred about him. One thinks of himself as occupying an inferior
and dependent position in relation to them; and surely this conception is not
without some truth. Only there is nothing in it which is really characteristic
of the sacred. It is not enough that one thing be subordinated to another for
the second to be sacred in regard to the first. Slaves are inferior to their
masters, subjects to their king, soldiers to their leaders, the miser to his
gold, the man ambitious for power to the hands which keep it from him; but if
it is sometimes said of a man that he makes a religion of those beings or
things whose eminent value and superiority to himself he thus recognizes, it is
clear that in any case the word is taken in a metaphorical sense, and that
there is nothing in these relations which is really religious.
On the other
hand, it must not be lost to view that there are sacred things of every degree,
and that there are some in relation to which a man feels himself relatively at
his ease. An amulet has a sacred character, yet the respect which it inspires is
nothing exceptional. Even before his gods, a man is not always in such a marked
state of inferiority; for it very frequently happens that he exercises a
veritable physical constraint upon them to obtain what he desires. He beats the
fetich with which he is not contented, but only to reconcile himself with it
again, if in the end it shows itself more docile to the wishes of its adorer.
To have rain, he throws stones into the spring or sacred lake where the god of
rain is thought to reside; he believes that by this means he forces him to come
out and show himself.
Moreover, if it is true
that man depends upon his gods, this dependence is reciprocal. The gods also
have need of man; without offerings and sacrifices they would die. We
shall even have occasion to show that this dependence of the gods upon their
worshippers is maintained even in the most idealistic religions.
But if a
purely hierarchic distinction is a critérium at once too general and too
imprecise, there is nothing left with which to characterize the sacred in its
relation to the profane except their heterogeneity. However, this heterogeneity
is sufficient to characterize this classification of things and to distinguish
it from all others, because it is very particular: it is absolute. In all the
history of human thought there exists no other example of two categories of
things so profoundly differentiated or so radically opposed to one another. The
traditional opposition of good and bad is nothing beside this; for the good and
the bad are only two opposed species of the same class, namely morals, just as
sickness and health are two different aspects of the same order of facts, life,
while the sacred and the profane have always and everywhere been conceived by
the human mind as two distinct classes, as two worlds between which there is
nothing in common. The forces which play in one are not simply those which are
met with in the other, but a little stronger; they are of a different sort. In
different religions, this opposition has been conceived in different ways.
Here, to separate these two sorts of things, it has seemed sufficient to
localize them in different parts of the physical universe; there, the first
have been put into an ideal and transcendental world, while the material world
is left in full possession of the others. But howsoever much the forms of the
contrast may vary, the fact of the contrast is universal.
This is not
equivalent to saying that a being can never pass from one of these worlds into
the other: but the manner in which this passage is effected, when it does take
place, puts into relief the essential duality of the two, kingdoms. In fact, it
implies a veritable metamorphosis.
This is
notably demonstrated by the initiation rites,
such as they are practised by a multitude of peoples. This initiation is a long
series of ceremonies with the object of introducing the young man into the
religious life: for the first time, he leaves the purely profane world where he
passed his first infancy, and enters into the world of sacred things. Now this
change of state is thought of, not as a simple and regular development of
pre-existent germs, but as a transformation totius
substantiae — of the whole being. It is said that at this moment the young
man dies, that the person that he was ceases to exist, and that another is
instantly substituted for it. He is re-born under a new form. Appropriate
ceremonies are felt to bring about this death and re-birth, which are not
understood in a merely symbolic sense, but are taken literally. Does this not prove that between the profane
being which he was and the religious being which he becomes, there is a break
of continuity?
This
heterogeneity is even so complete that it frequently degenerates into a
veritable antagonism. The two worlds are not only conceived of as separate, but
as even hostile and jealous rivals of each other. Since men cannot fully belong
to one except on condition of leaving the other completely, they are exhorted
to withdraw themselves completely from the profane world, in order to lead an
exclusively religious life. Hence comes the monasticism which is artificially
organized outside of and apart from the natural environment in which the
ordinary man leads the life of this world, in a different one, closed to the
first, and nearly its contrary. Hence comes the mystic asceticism whose object
is to root out from man all the attachment for the profane world that remains
in him. From that come all the forms of religious suicide, the logical
working-out of this asceticism; for the only manner of fully escaping the
profane life is, after all, to forsake all life.
The
opposition of these two classes manifests itself outwardly with a visible sign
by which we can easily recognize this very special classification, wherever it
exists. Since the idea of the sacred is always and everywhere separated from
the idea of the profane in the thought of men, and since we picture a sort of
logical chasm between the two, the mind irresistibly refuses to allow the two
corresponding things to be confounded, or even to be merely put in contact with
each other; for such a promiscuity, or even too direct a contiguity, would
contradict too violently the dissociation of these ideas in the mind.
The sacred
thing is par excellence that which
the profane should not touch, and cannot touch with impunity. To be sure, this
interdiction cannot go so far as to make all communication between the two
worlds impossible; for if the profane could in no way enter into relations with
the sacred, this latter could be good for nothing. But, in addition to the fact
that this establishment of relations is always a delicate operation in itself,
demanding great precautions and a more or less complicated initiation, it is
quite impossible, unless the profane is to lose its specific characteristics
and become sacred after a fashion and to a certain degree itself. The two
classes cannot even approach each other and keep their own nature at the same
time.
Thus we
arrive at the first critérium of religious beliefs. Undoubtedly there are
secondary species within these two fundamental classes which, in their turn,
are more or less incompatible with each other. But the
real characteristic of religious phenomena is that they always
suppose a bipartite division of the whole universe, known and knowable, into
two classes which embrace all that exists, but which radically exclude each
other. Sacred things are those which the interdictions protect and
isolate; profane things, those to which these interdictions are applied and
which must remain at a distance from the first.
Religious
beliefs are the representations which express the nature of sacred
things and the relations which they sustain, either with each other or with
profane things.
Finally, rites
are the rules of conduct which prescribe how a man should comport himself in
the presence of these sacred objects.
(definition of
Religion -1:
αρχικός ορισμός)
When a certain number of sacred things
sustain relations of co-ordination or subordination with each other in such a
way as to form a system having a certain unity, but which is not comprised
within any other system of the same sort, the totality of these beliefs and
their corresponding rites constitutes a religion.
From this
definition it is seen that a religion is not necessarily contained within one
sole and single idea, and does not proceed from one unique principle which,
though varying according to the circumstances under which it is applied, is
nevertheless at bottom always the same: it is rather a whole made up of
distinct and relatively individualized parts.
Each
homogeneous group of sacred things, or even each sacred thing of some
importance, constitutes a centre of organization about which gravitate a group
of beliefs and rites, or a particular cult; there is no religion, howsoever
unified it may be, which does not recognize a plurality of sacred things. Even
Christianity, at least in its Catholic form, admits, in addition to the divine
personality which, incidentally, is triple as well as one, the Virgin, angels,
saints, souls of the dead, etc. Thus a religion cannot be reduced to one single
cult generally, but rather consists in a system of cults, each endowed with a
certain autonomy. Also, this autonomy is variable. Sometimes they are arranged
in a hierarchy, and subordinated to some predominating cult, into which they
are finally absorbed; but sometimes, also, they are merely rearranged and
united. The religion which we are going to study will furnish us with an
example of just this latter sort of organization.
At the same
time we find the explanation of how there can be groups of religious phenomena
which do not belong to any special religion; it is because they have not been,
or are no longer, a part of any religious system. If, for some special reason,
one of the cults of which we just spoke happens to be maintained while the
group of which it was a part disappears, it survives only in a disintegrated
condition. That is what has happened to many agrarian cults which have survived
themselves as folk-lore. In certain cases, it is not even a cult, but a simple
ceremony or particular rite which persists in this way. (This is the case with
certain marriage and funeral rites, for example.)
Although this
definition is only preliminary, it permits us to see in what terms the problem
which necessarily dominates the science of religions should be stated. When we
believed that sacred beings could be distinguished from others merely by the
greater intensity of the powers attributed to them, the question of how men
came to imagine them was sufficiently simple: it was enough to demand which
forces had, because of their exceptional energy, been able to strike the human
imagination forcefully enough to inspire religious sentiments. But if, as we
have sought to establish, sacred things differ in nature from profane things,
if they have a wholly different essence, then the problem is more complex. For
we must first of all ask what has been able to lead men to see in the world two
heterogeneous and incompatible worlds, though nothing in sensible experience
seems able to suggest the idea of so radical a duality to them.
However, this
definition is not yet complete, for it is equally applicable to two sorts of
facts which, while being related to each other, must be distinguished
nevertheless: these are magic and religion.
Magic, too,
is made up of beliefs and rites. Like religion, it has its myths and its
dogmas; only they are more elementary, undoubtedly because, seeking technical
and utilitarian ends, it does not waste its time in pure speculation. It has
its ceremonies, sacrifices, lustrations, prayers, chants and dances as well.
The beings which the magician invokes and the forces which he throws in play
are not merely of the same nature as the forces and beings to which religion
addresses itself; very frequently, they are identically the same. Thus, even
with the most inferior societies, the souls of the dead are essentially sacred
things, and the object of religious rites. But at the same time, they play a
considerable rôle in magic.
In Australia
as well as in Melanesia, in Greece as well as among the Christian peoples, the
souls of the dead, their bones and their hair, are among the intermediaries
used the most frequently by the magician. Demons are also a common instrument
for magic action. Now these demons are also beings surrounded with
interdictions; they too are separated and live in a world apart, so that it is
frequently difficult to distinguish them from the gods properly so-called.
Moreover, in
Christianity itself, is not the devil a fallen god, or even leaving aside all
question of his origin, does he not have a religious character from the mere
fact that the hell of which he has charge is something indispensable to the
Christian religion?
There are
even some regular and official deities who are invoked by the magician.
Sometimes these are the gods of a foreign people; for example, Greek magicians
called upon Egyptian, Assyrian or Jewish gods. Sometimes, they are even
national gods: Hecate and Diana were the object of a magic cult; the Virgin,
Christ and the saints have been utilized in the same way by Christian
magicians.
Then will it
be necessary to say that magic is hardly distinguishable from religion; that
magic is full of religion just as religion is full of magic, and consequently
that it is impossible to separate them and to define the one without the other?
It is difficult to sustain this thesis, because of the marked repugnance of
religion for magic, and in return, the hostility of the second towards the
first.
Magic takes a
sort of professional pleasure in profaning holy things; in its rites, it
performs the contrary of the religious ceremony.
[ Note: For example, One
turns his back to the altar, or goes around the altar commencing by the left
instead of by the right. ]
On its side,
religion, when it has not condemned and prohibited magic rites, has always
looked upon them with disfavour. As Hubert and Mauss have remarked, there is
something thoroughly anti-religious in the doings of the magician.
Whatever
relations there may be between these two sorts of institutions, it is difficult
to imagine their not being opposed somewhere; and it is still more necessary
for us to find where they are differentiated, as we plan to limit our
researches to religion, and to stop at the point where magic commences.
Here is how a
line of demarcation can be traced between these two domains.
The really religious beliefs are always common to a determined
group, which makes profession of adhering to them and of practising the rites
connected with them. They are not merely received individually by all the
members of this group; they are something belonging to the group, and they make
its unity. The individuals which compose it feel themselves united to each
other by the simple fact that they have a common faith.
A society
whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard
to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact
that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called
a Church.
In all
history, we do not find a single religion without a Church. Sometimes the
Church is strictly national, sometimes it passes the frontiers; sometimes it
embraces an entire people (Rome, Athens, the Hebrews), sometimes it embraces
only a part of them (the Christian societies since the advent of
Protestantism); sometimes it is directed by a corps of priests, sometimes it is
almost completely devoid of any official directing body.
[ Note: Undoubtedly it is rare that a ceremony does not
have some director at the moment when it is celebrated; even in the most
crudely organized societies, there are generally certain men whom the
importance of their social position points out to exercise a directing
influence over the religious life (for example, the chiefs of the local groups
of certain Australian societies). But this attribution of functions is still
very uncertain.]
But wherever we observe the religious life,
we find that it has a definite group as its foundation. Even the so-called
private cults, such as the domestic cult or the cult of a corporation, satisfy
this condition; for they are always celebrated by a group, the family or the
corporation. Moreover, even these particular religions are ordinarily only
special forms of a more general religion which embraces all.
[Note: At Athens, the
gods to whom the domestic cult was addressed were only specialized forms of the
gods of the city (Ζεύς κτήσιος, Ζεύς ερκείος). In the same way, in the Middle Ages, the patrons of
the guilds were saints of the calendar.]
Τhese
restricted Churches are in reality only chapels of a vaster Church which, by
reason of this very extent, merits this name still more.
It is quite
another matter with magic. To be sure, the belief in magic is always more or
less general; it is very frequently diffused in large masses of the population,
and there are even peoples where it has as many adherents as the real religion.
But it does not result in binding together those who adhere to it, nor in
uniting them into a group leading a common life. There is no Church of magic.
Between the
magician and the individuals who consult him, as between these individuals
themselves, there are no lasting bonds which make them members of the same
moral community, comparable to that formed by the believers in the same god or
the observers of the same cult.
The magician
has a clientele and not a Church, and it is very possible that his clients have
no other relations between each other, or even do not know each other; even the
relations which they have with him are generally accidental and transient; they
are just like those of a sick man with his physician. The official and public
character with which he is sometimes invested changes nothing in this
situation; the fact that he works openly does not unite him more regularly or
more durably to those who have recourse to his services.
It is true
that in certain cases, magicians form societies among themselves: it happens
that they assemble more or less periodically to celebrate certain rites in
common; it is well known what a place these assemblies of witches hold in
European folk-lore. But it is to be remarked that these associations are in no
way indispensable to the working of the magic; they are even rare and rather
exceptional.
The magician
has no need of uniting himself to his fellows to practise his art. More
frequently, he is a recluse; in general, far from seeking society, he flees it.
"Even in regard to his colleagues, he always keeps his personal
independence." (Hubert and Mauss).
Religion, on
the other hand, is inseparable from the idea of a Church. From this point of
view, there is an essential difference between magic and religion. But what is
especially important is that when these societies of magic are formed, they do
not include all the adherents to magic, but only the magicians; the laymen, if
they may be so called, that is to say, those for whose profit the rites are
celebrated, in fine, those who represent the worshippers in the regular cults,
are excluded. Now the magician is for magic what the priest is for religion,
but a college of priests is not a Church, any more than a religious congregation
which should devote itself to some particular saint in the shadow of a
cloister, would be a particular cult.
A Church is
not a fraternity of priests; it is a moral community formed by all the
believers in a single faith, laymen as well as priests. But magic lacks any
such community.
[ Note: Robertson Smith
has already pointed out that magic is opposed to religion, as the individual to
the social (The Religion of the Semites,
2 edit., pp. 264-265). Also, in thus distinguishing magic from religion, we do
not mean to establish a break of continuity between them. The frontiers between
the two domains are frequently uncertain. ]
But if the
idea of a Church is made to enter into the definition of religion, does that
not exclude the private religions which the individual establishes for himself
and celebrates by himself? There is scarcely a society where these are not
found. Every Ojibway, as we shall see below, has his own personal manitou, which he chooses himself and to
which he renders special religious services; the Melanesian of the Banks
Islands has his tamaniu; the Roman,
his genius; the Christian, his patron saint and guardian angel, etc.
By definition
all these cults seem to be independent of all idea of the group. Not only are
these individual religions very frequent in history, but nowadays many are asking
if they are not destined to be the pre-eminent form of the religious life, and
if the day will not come when there will be no other cult than that which each
man will freely perform within himself.
[Note: This is the conclusion reached by Spencer in his
Ecclesiastical Institutions (ch. xvi), and by Sabatier in his Outlines of a
Philosophy of Religion, based on Psychology and History (tr. by Seed), and by
all the school to which he belongs.]
But if we
leave these speculations in regard to the future aside for the moment, and
confine ourselves to religions such as they are at present or have been in the
past, it becomes clearly evident that these individual cults are not distinct
and autonomous religious systems, but merely aspects of the common religion of
the whole Church, of which the individuals are members. The patron saint of the
Christian is chosen from the official list of saints recognized by the Catholic
Church; there are even canonical rules prescribing how each Catholic should
perform this private cult.
In the same
way, the idea that each man necessarily has a protecting genius is found, under
different forms, at the basis of a great number of American religions, as well
as of the Roman religion (to cite only these two examples); for, as will be
seen later, it is very closely connected with the idea of the soul, and this
idea of the soul is not one of those which can be left entirely to individual
choice. In a word, it is the Church of which he is a member which teaches the
individual what these personal gods are, what their function is, how he should
enter into relations with them and how he should honour them.
When a
methodical analysis is made of the doctrines of any Church whatsoever, sooner
or later we come upon those concerning private cults. So these are not two
religions of different types, and turned in opposite directions; both are made
up of the same ideas and the same principles, here applied to circumstances
which are of interest to the group as a whole, there to the life of the
individual. This solidarity is even so close that among certain peoples, the
ceremonies by which the faithful first enter into communication with their
protecting geniuses are mixed with rites whose public character is
incontestable, namely the rites of initiation.
There still
remain those contemporary aspirations towards a religion which would consist
entirely in internal and subjective states, and which would be constructed
freely by each of us. But howsoever real these aspirations may be, they cannot
affect our definition, for this is to be applied only to facts already
realized, and not to uncertain possibilities. One can define religions such as
they are, or such as they have been, but not such as they more or less vaguely
tend to become. It is possible that this religious individualism is destined to
be realized in facts; but before we can say just how far this may be the case,
we must first know what religion is, of what elements it is made up, from what
causes it results, and what function it fulfils — all questions whose solution
cannot be foreseen before the threshold of our study has been passed. It is
only at the close of this study that we can attempt to anticipate the future.
(definition of Religion – 2: τελικός ορισμός)
Thus we
arrive at the following definition: “A
religion is a unified
system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say,
things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one
single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.”
The second
element which thus finds a place in our definition is no less essential than
the first; for by showing that the idea of religion is inseparable from that of
the Church, it makes it clear that religion should be an eminently collective
thing.
from Chapter 1:
Definition of Religious Phenomena and of Religion
pp. 36-47
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The elementary
forms of the religious life, a study in ...
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[ ανάρτηση 4 Δεκεμβρίου 2024 :
Emile Durkheim
definition of Religion
“The
Elementary Forms of the Religious Life”
Sociology of Religion
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ
ΣΚΕΨΗ ]
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