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Durkheim and Pragmatism:
An Old Twist on a Contemporary Debate*
Anne Warfield Rawls
Wayne State University
Durkheim’s lectures on pragmatism, given in 1913–14, constitute both a significant

critique of pragmatism and a clarification of Durkheim’s own position. Unfortunately,
these lectures have received little attention, most of it critical. When they have been
taken seriously, the analysis tends to focus on their historical context and not on the
details of Durkheim’s actual argument. This is partly because the tendency to interpret
Durkheim’s theory of knowledge in idealist terms makes a nonsense of his criticisms of
pragmatism. It is also due to a lack of serious appraisal of the lectures as a series of
arguments in their own right.
In 1913–14 Emile Durkheim gave a series of lectures on pragmatism in which he force-

fully and systematically challenged the viability of pragmatism. Lost for a number of
years, not published in French until 1955, or English until 1983 (as Pragmatism and
Sociology), the lectures (recovered from student notes) have received only limited atten-
tion. Durkheim offered the lectures with the stated aim of countering the growing influ-
ence of pragmatism in France before World War I, offering his own position as a corrective
for the shortcomings of pragmatism. Yet, today pragmatism is more influential than ever
while Durkheim’s criticisms, when they are noted at all, are generally considered to have
been largely without substance. In fact, it is sometimes argued that Durkheim’s own posi-
tion is more viable if it is interpreted in pragmatist (or postmodern) terms.
Because of the growing influence of pragmatism and postmodernism in modern soci-
ology and the importance of Durkheim’s own criticisms of pragmatism in establishing the
relationship between it and his own position, his lectures on pragmatism are of central
theoretical importance. If Durkheim’s position is to be taken seriously, and not reduced to
a variant of modern pragmatist and/or “cultural” arguments, then his criticisms of prag-
matism, articulated in the context of his own position, need to be carefully examined as
arguments in their own right and their coherence evaluated.
Durkheim’s criticisms of William James in the lectures are serious and well thought
out. It is true that Durkheim shares with James a rejection of many Enlightenment ideas, a
point which is sometimes made the basis for claiming a pragmatist element in Durkheim’s
own position. But the shared rejection of Enlightenment ideas merely shows that they both
wrestled with the same problems, not that Durkheim accepted James’s solution, or that his
criticisms of James are without merit. This should increase contemporary interest in
Durkheim’s proposed solution since, like James, he addressed issues that have become a
* This paper would not have been written without discussion with and suggestions from many people. In
particular I need to thank David Maines with whom I have shared a sociology department for the past five years.
My day to day association with David, a committed pragmatist, brought me to the realization that the relationship
between pragmatism and sociology, both historically and in contemporary debates, is a serious and consequential
one. I need also thank Harold Garfinkel for tireless reading and discussion of this and other manuscripts. My
understanding of the relationship between contemporary misunderstandings of his position and the original
pragmatist misunderstanding of Durkheim has benefited greatly from his comments. Finally, I need to thank
Norbert Wiley for his careful rendering of the pragmatist self, and Randy Collins for pioneering work on the
relationship between Durkheim and interactionism. Randy has also been very generous with both time and
comments.
Sociological Theory 15:1 March 1997

© American Sociological Association. 1722 N Street NW, Washington, DC 20036
6 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
focus of contemporary concern. In fact, Durkheim’s arguments pose a serious challenge to

pragmatism. Modern pragmatists should be as hard pressed to counter these criticisms as
the pragmatists of Durkheim’s day, had either taken them seriously. Unfortunately, the
criticisms are generally treated as a failure on Durkheim’s part to appreciate pragmatism,
and thus as further evidence of problems in his own position, rather than as a serious
critique of pragmatism.
There are several reasons for this:
First, the lectures have received very little attention. This may be due to the fact that
they appeared rather late after the major lines of interpretation had already been drawn up
in the 1930s. It may also be because they deal with a philosophical issue in which, due to
the neglected state of theory in the discipline, sociologists in general have little interest.
What attention the lectures have received has been primarily from those with an interest in,
and therefore an interest in defending, pragmatism. The general dismissal of Durkheim’s
criticisms may therefore be due in part to the fact that the lectures have been read primarily
by those with a vested interest in dismissing them.
Second, the lectures have received more attention as historical documents than as argu-
ments in their own right. The introductions to both the English (Allcock 1983) and French
(Cuvillier 1955) editions, for instance, while providing admirable historical contexts for
the work, focus more on the reasons why Durkheim would give a series of lectures on
pragmatism in 1913–14 and the relationship between these lectures and Durkheim’s over-
all corpus of work than on the actual arguments of the lectures themselves. Even Stjepan
Mestrovic (1988:50–53), who presents a cogent summary of Durkheim’s objections to
pragmatism, arguing that they have not been taken seriously enough, nevertheless does not
examine these objections as arguments, but rather considers their place in a general con-
text of argument and debate. This treatment in terms of their place in a history of ideas, in
lieu of a serious appraisal of their status as arguments, has characterized most treatments
of the lectures.
Third, the early and persistent confusion of Durkheim’s epistemology with his sociol-
ogy of knowledge, which led to its misinterpretation as an idealist position, contributes to
the interpretation of his work as pragmatist and postmodernist. Since its first articulation
in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life in 1912, Durkheim’s theory of knowledge1
has been interpreted as an idealist position investing primary reality in cultural “represen-
tations” (Rawls 1997a). The argument was interpreted as constituting a major break from
his earlier work, wherein the emphasis was said to be more on what the critics referred to
as external “morphological” structures of “constraint.”
Actually, Durkheim’s theory of knowledge is composed of two parts: an epistemology
and a sociology of knowledge (Rawls 1996). The epistemology argues that a basic set of
concepts, which Durkheim calls “the categories of the understanding,” are the direct result
of participation in concrete social practices of particular sorts. (It is not an idealist posi-
tion, and if I did not have a basic objection to using the word “morphology” to refer to
concrete enacted social practices I would argue that “morphology” was as important to
Durkheim’s epistemology as the critics say it was to his earlier arguments.)
Durkheim’s sociology of knowledge, on the other hand, explains belief systems as the
result of attempts by persons to explain their primary social experience of participating in
concrete enacted social practices; experiences consisting of powerful feelings sometimes
referred to by Durkheim as emotions (Rawls 1997b). Therefore, while the basic categories
1
Durkheim’s theory of knowledge is found primarily in The Elementary Forms, with preliminary discussions
in Primitive Classification ([1901]1963) and implications in Pragmatism and Sociology. But, it is also implicit in
The Rules of the Sociological Method ([1895]1982), The Division of Labor, and Suicide. See also Durkheim’s
replies to critics in the appendix to Rules.
DURKHEIM AND PRAGMATISM 7
of the understanding are directly produced by enacted social practices, beliefs and social
representations in general are “about” such experiences, but not produced directly by them.
In the past the resulting misinterpretation of Durkheim’s work as constituting two dis-
tinct phases, an earlier structural positivist phase and a later idealist phase, led to a greater
emphasis on Durkheim’s early work to the detriment of The Elementary Forms and the
lectures on pragmatism. This was largely due to the prevalence of positivist approaches in
American sociology, which preferred a structural to a “cultural” argument. The misinter-
pretation of Durkheim’s position in Europe reversed this process emphasizing the cultural
over the structural elements in his argument in accordance with European preferences at
the time.
Over the past two decades, however, with the waning of positivism in the United States
and a correspondingly increased interest in European social theory, a new trend has emerged
wherein it is argued that the cultural or ideological Durkheim, attributed to The Elemen-
tary Forms, is the more important part of Durkheim’s work. On this view Durkheim is
interpreted as arguing that ideas and representations are the real social facts, when actually
he argued the reverse: that social processes generate2 both the social person and their basic
categories of thought.3
This “idealist” or “cultural” position attributed to Durkheim has strong affinities to
pragmatism and postmodernism, leading to a renewed interest in Durkheim by pragmatist
and postmodern sociologists. Current interpretations sometimes even suggest that Durkheim
is best interpreted as a precursor of pragmatism and postmodernism.4 Thus, the same
misunderstanding of his work as idealist, which led to its being overlooked in the first
place, ironically contributes to Durkheim’s newfound popularity because it provides an
individualist and idealist interpretation of Durkheim with a pragmatist, postmodern appeal.
THE LECTURES
A close analysis of Durkheim’s arguments against pragmatism in the lectures reveals not
only that Durkheim was not in any sense a pragmatist or postmodernist but that he clearly
understood the philosophical dilemmas that pragmatism sought to address, and argued that
pragmatism had failed to avoid the problems which it had been designed to overcome.5
2
The word “constitute” would be more appropriate here, in the sense of “constitutive,” but the phrase “social
processes constitute ideas” might be interpreted to mean that society equals ideas. Therefore the word “generate”
is used in its place in order to emphasize that society is not composed of ideas; rather it is composed of concrete
social processes that generate ideas. “Constitute” is the better word because it preserves the reciprocal sense of
the processes being constitutive of the ideas, as in the rules of chess constituting the game of chess; whereas
“generates” seems to be more of an unrelated force that is not the intended meaning. However, the chess analogy
is not perfect either because, unlike the rules of chess, enacting the ritual is not done by following the ideas it
generates. The ritual has its own rules and explanations that Durkheim argues, are completely unrelated to the
ideas it generates.
3
Biological individuals have sensations. They also have ideas, although these are incommunicable, unreflec-
tive, and pre-rational. Durkheim argues that until persons participate in ritual social forms and thereby develop
the basic categories of thought, they do not have any communicable ideas or rational thoughts. It is interesting to
consider whether Mead’s arguments solve some of the problems inherent in James’s pragmatism, or whether it
should be considered rather as a new position altogether, more akin to Durkheim’s own critique of pragmatism
than to James.
4
Ironically, the idealist misinterpretation of Durkheim’s work in France during the twenties and thirties heav-
ily influenced the structuralism of Levy-Bruhl ([1910]1966, [1922]1966) and Lévi-Strauss ([1958]1963) and the
semiotics of Saussure. Thus, in an interesting way, Durkheim really was a precursor of postmodernism; albeit
only through misinterpretation and only then as the object of postmodern criticism, not as the author of the
postmodern critique.
5
Durkheim understood pragmatism to be represented primarily by the work of William James, with some
references to Dewey and Peirce and none to G.H. Mead. On the basis of his comments on pragmatism in the
lectures it seems safe to assume that Durkheim had no familiarity with Mead’s theory of the social construction
of self (which, in any case, was not published until after Durkheim’s death and then only in the form of lecture
notes).
Durkheim also clearly spells out the common ground he believes he shares with prag-
matism, and extensively elaborates the points of difference. Unfortunately, the manuscript
version of the lectures has been lost and the text has been reconstructed from student notes.
There are one or two points at which it is clear that something has been lost by the note
taker; these will be noted when they appear to be relevant to the argument. For the most
part, however, the existing manuscript seems to present a fairly clear idea of Durkheim’s
arguments. The lectures make it clear that Durkheim would have rejected any interpreta-
tion of his work as a precursor of pragmatism or poststructuralism.
Very little has been written concerning the lectures on pragmatism. Steven Lukes cites
only three works, all in French—two by Armand Cuvillier and one by De Goudemar.6 One
of the few serious treatments of the lectures in English, by Hans Joas (1993), argues that
Durkheim takes a very negative view of pragmatism for essentially nonintellectual rea-
sons. Lukes (1973:488) takes a more moderate view, writing that “while rejecting virtually
all of the pragmatist’s specific arguments [Durkheim] found some value, first in their
negative critique of ‘rationalism’ and, second, in their positive objectives,” My own read-
ing differs from both in seeing a more positive treatment of pragmatism in the lectures
combined with a more cogent and definitive critique.
Throughout the lectures, Durkheim seems to be agreeing in principle with much of
what pragmatism wants to accomplish. Durkheim’s criticism is not of James’s objectives,
or his characterization of the problem. He even agrees in principle with pragmatism that
the solution to overcoming the problem of dualism is a dynamic link between thought and
reality. His objection is that James’s approach does not and cannot accomplish what it sets
out to, while his own approach can and does. It seems to be a fairly accurate, positive, and
sensitive reading of pragmatism given the ultimately rather serious disagreements which
Durkheim will raise.7
The intent of this analysis is not to give an accurate portrayal of pragmatism. The focus
is rather on a consideration of Durkheim’s own objections to pragmatism insofar as they
shed light on his attitude toward idealism, individualism, and pragmatism (and, via prag-
matism, poststructuralism). Indeed the lectures make it possible to clarify several issues
regarding the relationship of Durkheim’s theory of knowledge to philosophy which have
been muddled (particularly the comments on radical empiricism). Toward that end the
paper will examine Durkheim’s characterization of pragmatism with attention to what
Durkheim said he had in common with pragmatism, and the substance of his main criti-
cisms of pragmatism. These criticisms generally concern the problem of the relationship
between concepts and reality, the problem of truth and reason, and the problem of
individualism.
1. Why Durkheim Thought Pragmatism Was Important

Durkheim opens the lectures by telling his students that pragmatism is on the ascendancy
and that it is important for them to be familiar with it so that they can argue against it.
Insofar as pragmatism is a theory that presents the human intellect in a dynamic relation-
ship with the external world, Durkheim argues, there are some important affinities between
his position and that of James. He argues at some length that some version of a dynamic
relationship between thought and reality is the only solution to the epistemological prob-
lem of overcoming the separation between thought and reality. However, he warns that the
6
The introduction to the 1955 French version of the lectures by Cuvillier appears in translation in the English
edition of the lectures, along with an editor’s introduction by John Allcock.
7
It is important to keep in mind that Durkheim’s focus was on James, while the later work of Mead and
Dewey, which made the social connection within pragmatism, had not yet been written.
pragmatists proceed from a purely individualist position, and that the dynamic relationship
which they posit is the action relation between the biological being and the world of
nature, not the social being engaged in enacting social practices. Pragmatists, as repre-
sented in France by James in 1913, had not yet considered the problem of the socially
constructed self in a dynamic relationship with the social world, as Durkheim had attempted
to do in The Elementary Forms.
Durkheim agrees with James on certain aspects of the “creating consciousness,” which
James posits as the origin of “reality,” and claims to share with pragmatism the idea that
the dualism of idea and reality can only be overcome by a dynamic relation. In fact,
Durkheim will say that this notion of a dynamic relation overcoming dualism is a major
contribution of pragmatism which it shares with his own work. However, he will argue that
pragmatism does not live up to this goal: that is, action as the product of a creating con-
sciousness confronted by an obstacle is ultimately only another static relation. Because it
gives up the relation to underlying reality it does not link thought to reality, but only
individual thought to individual action which has been posited as the only reality. The
relationship is static and not dynamic because it does not link two different sorts of thing,
consciousness or action, but, rather remains at the level of the individual. Durkheim argues
that in spite of having claimed to posit a dynamic relation between thought and action
pragmatism really posits a static relation. Furthermore, because the relation is individual-
ist it has to give up any relation to an underlying reality.
According to Durkheim ([1913–14]1983:23), pragmatists argue that thoughts trans-
lated into action create reality. This is the pragmatist solution to the dualism between
thought and reality. If thoughts are reality then the division disappears. The pragmatists
hope to avoid the charge of idealism and the problems inherent therein by arguing that
persons only become conscious in action and therefore thought is immediately and natu-
rally translated into action. This results in an external reality (action) which is nevertheless
the product of individual thought. Durkheim argues that according to the pragmatists “The
principle factor of novelty in the world is consciousness” ([1913–14]1983:23). He gives
the example of the constellation Great Bear. The stars may have been there before human
consciousness “discovered” them, but they were not there as the constellation Great Bear.
Durkheim writes that from this perspective “Man seems to be limited to translating, to
discovering. But, in a sense, he also adds and creates: he creates the number seven; he
creates the resemblance” ([1913–14]1983:23).
For Durkheim also persons make their world, although he does not feel that the pro-
cess is arbitrary, as the pragmatists have supposed. He argues that the arbitrariness of
the pragmatic notions of truth and reality are a result of pragmatism’s inherent individ-
ualism. The argument for a shared “reality” cannot begin with the individual, according
to Durkheim, although it cannot proceed without the individual either, and he will say
that ultimately collectivism takes place in the individual consciousness ([1913–
14]1983:97).
For the pragmatist attempt to overcome the problem of rationalism by dynamically
linking thought and reality through action, Durkheim would substitute “social” for “real-
ity” and “social action” for “action.” James is forced to give up any link to an underlying
reality in order to secure the argument for a creating consciousness in dynamic relation to
reality. Durkheim feels that the link between the socially constructed individual and social
reality is a link that can be maintained and would solve James’s problem because the
linkage is now between two different things, individual consciousness and an external
order of social processes which is real. The relationship is therefore a dynamic one which
moves between the two distinct levels, and not a static relation remaining at the level of the
individual.
Thus, while Durkheim agrees with the principle that a dynamic relation is necessary in
order to solve the epistemological dilemma, he criticizes the pragmatists for claiming—
but failing—to link thought and reality through the dynamic relation of action. He argues
that they have really maintained the separation between thought and reality, merely sub-
stituting action for thought. In other words, they set up a relationship between individual
action and individual thought. This, Durkheim argues, is because pragmatism is individ-
ualist and cannot overcome the separation between the individual and the external world.
For Durkheim, reality is a social dynamic which consists of what he calls “a true circular-
ity,” wherein thought and action are twin-born ([1913–14]1983:67). Social practices con-
stitute an external reality which is related to individual thought through social action.
The individual creating consciousness of the pragmatists would create separate worlds
(within limits of functional utility), and if these separate worlds are taken to be reality, then
the possibility of truth is lost. According to Durkheim the possibility of truth, like the
possibility of intelligibility, is not expendable. If we lose it we lose the ability to function
as social beings. He does not agree with James that a consensus bounded by considerations
of utility—that is “what works”—could provide a sufficient basis for intelligibility, com-
munication, and human reason. The creating consciousness must be socially constructed
so that it can create and sustain a communicable world. Truth based on an individual
creating consciousness would be not only infinitely variable, but incomplete because it
would keep changing over the course of even individual lives.
Durkheim’s criticisms of pragmatism center on the notion of truth as arbitrary and
relativistic, which he attributes to the individual nature of the creating consciousness;
the inherent idealism in the idea that thought translated into action equals reality; and the
emphasis on the individual and individual action as the beginning point or center of the
alleged dynamic relation which action constitutes between thought and reality.
Contrary to Hans Joas’s (1993) interpretation of Durkheim’s rejection of pragmatism as
motivated by politics, nationalism, or a general European anti-American sentiment,
Durkheim’s criticisms of pragmatism seem to be genuine and thoughtful objections. As a
socio-logician one would expect Durkheim to take issue with individualism as he had done
throughout his career, whatever its source. And, given that he identified a socially based
sociology with France, he might well see pragmatist individualism as a threat to the French
intellectual tradition. However, what he is ultimately defending is sociology and the under-
lying logic of his own socio-logical epistemology. Given the theory of knowledge, which
he had articulated in The Elementary Forms, one would expect him to forcefully reject a
notion of truth as entirely relative to individual action and which relegated empirical study
to the level of individual action and consciousness.
2. Critique of the Pragmatist Idea of Truth

Durkheim presents a fairly comprehensive examination of James’s arguments concerning
truth in the Fourth Lecture. He cites James as maintaining that “Truth, law and language
fairly boil away from them [magistrates and professors] at the least touch of novel fact,”
and “Our rights, wrongs, prohibitions, penalties, words, forms, idioms, beliefs, are so
many new creations that add themselves as fast as history proceeds” ([1913–14]1983:24;
James [1907]1955:242). According to Durkheim, for the pragmatist “ ‘these things make
themselves,’ they are not ready-made; and it is the same with truth as with other things:
truth is an uninterrupted process of changes” ([1913–14]1983:24).
Durkheim comments that “pragmatists certainly show how truth is enriched and becomes
more complex. But, does it necessarily follow that truth changes, properly speaking?”
([1913–14]1983:24). He asks whether as new species develop the laws of life change. If a
new social species develops, can we conclude that the laws of social life have changed? He
will argue that the enrichment of truth should not be confused as indicating a “fugitive
nature” of truth ([1913–14]1983:24).
Formal institutional truths may well evaporate before the facts, but does the “truth”
(which for Durkheim is the relation between social action and idea) generated by local,
ritual, order, and practice evaporate? In not distinguishing between a level of idea or truth
generated by social fact (that is, social process), and a level of idea or truth generated by
either the individual consciousness, or by institutions or institutionalized ideas, Durkheim
argues that the pragmatists have lost hold of “truth.”
In addition to various theoretical arguments, Durkheim also gives an empirical or expe-
riential critique of the pragmatist notion of truth. He argues that one of the things wrong
with the pragmatist conception of truth is that it does not accord with our experience of
truth. In experience truth imposes itself on us, it is not perceived as being of our own
making. Durkheim suggests that truth is experienced immediately as an external force,
therefore it cannot be an individual production. He maintains that “Such a universally held
conception must correspond to something real” ([1913–14]1983:68).
Where pragmatism has society exercising an external and coercive force on minds in
order to produce an arbitrary truth, Durkheim interprets truth itself as exercising an exter-
nal and coercive force: “This pressure that truth is seen as exercising on minds is itself a
symbol that must be interpreted, even if we refuse to make of truth something absolute and
extra-human” ([1913–14]1983:68).
According to Durkheim, pragmatism fails to recognize the duality between individual
experience and collective experience: “Pragmatism, which levels everything, deprives itself
of the means of making this interpretation by failing to recognize the duality that exists
between the mentality which results from individual experiences and that which results
from collective experiences” ([1913–14]1983:68). For Durkheim, the dynamic relation
that explains truth must include both individual and social elements. He goes on to say that
“Sociology, however, reminds us that what is social always possesses a higher dignity than
that which is individual” ([1913–14]1983:68). Sociology retains the ability to analyze
truth as part of that higher collective and external dignity. Pragmatism loses this possibility:
The fact that things change does not necessarily mean that truth changes at the same
time. Truth, one could say, is enriched; but it does not really change. It has certainly
been enlarged and increased in the course of the development of history; but saying
that truth grows is quite different from saying that it varies in its very nature. ([1913–
14]1983:68)
The arguments over truth in the lectures also appear to continue Durkheim’s battle with
his own critics over whether or not his position entailed a relativity of knowledge or
positivism (two opposing interpretations, both of which Durkheim repeatedly defended
himself against). In criticizing James in this regard Durkheim makes it clear that he was
not advocating relativity (see Lukes 1973:486–88); nor was he advocating an “absolute
and extra-human” truth ([1913–14]1983:68).
3. Ideas Are Copies of Reality

After challenging the pragmatist notion of truth directly in Lecture Four, Durkheim exam-
ines the epistemological arguments that lead to what he feels is the absurdity of an incom-
plete and ever-changing truth. Pragmatists argue, Durkheim says, that “thought is not a
copy of the real: it is a true creation” ([1913–14]1983:23). Therefore, since thought creates
new realities, truth cannot be complete, because reality is not complete. But Durkheim will
say that truth as a copy of social reality does not have these problems. It is clearly not in the
pragmatist sense that Durkheim embraces the notion of a creating consciousness. Durkheim’s
creating force is the group enactment of social practice. He argues that the individual
creating consciousness leads to an unsatisfying and insupportable notion of truth. In fact,
it is a notion of truth that negates the meaning of the term as we use it.
According to Durkheim James rejected the notion that thoughts are copies of reality
(which had been a mainstay of the empiricist position), in which case ideas would be
redundant and not add anything to reality. Durkheim takes issue with this, arguing in his
conclusion that even ideas as copies of reality do add something—they add the possibility
of society, which could not occur without ideas ([1913–14]1983:92).
The point of difference between Durkheim and James over this issue of whether or not
ideas are copies of reality or whether ideas create reality is important. For a nominalist,
ideas can be copies of other ideas with no reference to reality. For the classical empiricist,
ideas are copies of physical reality. For the pragmatist, ideas are not copies, but rather
creations. For Durkheim, categories of the understanding are not copies of anything; they
are direct experiences of social relations in the form of enacted social practices. The cat-
egories are created through the enactment of social practices. But they are also direct
experiences, sometimes described as emotional, of (enacted social) reality. Therefore, for
Durkheim the categories, while socially created, do not create reality. They are generated
by it.
For the pragmatists, ideas are freely created by the mind. This leaves pragmatism with
the problem of solipsism (that each mind creates its own universe), as Durkheim will point
out in his last lecture. The only limit on the infinite variety of truth is utility, as a basic level
of agreement is necessary in order for persons to successfully solve problems.
In Durkheim’s system there is also a very real sense in which we “make” the categories
which are nevertheless external to us and which we experience as external reality. The
categories are made and remade through our activities. Thus there is a superficial resem-
blance to the argument that reality is of our own making, and Durkheim expresses agree-
ment with the general idea behind the pragmatist approach. But, for Durkheim, this is not
an arbitrary process of creation by the individual mind; it is an inherently social process
whereby shared activities create shared ideas in necessary ways.
In contrast to the categories, which are the foundation of Durkheim’s epistemology, the
shared cosmologies and universes of symbols elaborated by his sociology of knowledge
would seem to create ideas in individual persons in a nominalist way compatible with
poststructuralism. Consequently, Durkheim’s sociology of knowledge, which elaborates
this point, has been a focus of contemporary interest in his work. However, the sociology
of knowledge, which treats the entire system of symbols in society, is not Durkheim’s
solution to the epistemological dilemma that he and James sought to overcome. According
to Durkheim, certain joint activities in the form of shared enacted practices produce shared
ideas, which he referred to as the categories of the understanding. These six fundamental
shared ideas (time, space, class, force, cause, totality) are produced not from other ideas,
but out of whole cloth from the experience of the social activity. Social processes, unlike
the individual, do not create the categories of the understanding in arbitrary ways, Durkheim
argues, because the social processes that generate the categories are responsive to funda-
mental and ever-present human needs (which seem to center on the need to generate cat-
egories of thought in common so that communication and cooperation are possible).
Unlike symbols and collective representations in general, these categories are produced
only by activities that respond to fundamental and therefore universal human needs. Thus,
there is a truth to these ideas because while they are created by social practices, the process
through which they are created is in an important sense necessary and universal. Durkheim’s
sense of universal requires inspection. He does not mean that the ideas themselves are
universal, or that the activities which generate them are always the same. What he does
mean is that the fundamental human need is always the same and, therefore, there will
always be some activities fulfilling this need and that these activities will always generate
more or less the same ideas (that is, categories of the understanding). Since he is talking
about ideas like “force” and “causality,” it is hard to see how they could vary to any large
extent and still be the same ideas. Ideas may be made and remade, but for Durkheim they
are made in and through participation in concrete social processes, not by the capricious-
ness of the individual consciousness. Therefore, those concrete social processes are the
“social facts” behind those ideas.
4. Dynamic Rationalism
Durkheim’s repeated references to himself as a rationalist have led to a confusion of his
position with the rationalism of Descartes and other rationalist philosophers. That his
self-identification as a rationalist should not be understood in any conventional sense is
made clear in a passage where he positions himself relative to the pragmatist arguments
concerning rationalism:
Such is the conception that Schiller, James and Dewey have of rationalism. Tradi-
tional rationalism separates thought from existence. Thought is in the mind; exis-
tence is outside it. Hence the two forms of reality can no longer meet. If by a hypothesis
one places thought outside existence, the abyss that separates them can no longer be
crossed. The only way to solve the difficulty would be to refuse to admit the exis-
tence of this gap between existence and thought. If thought is an element of reality,
if it is a part of existence and of life, there is no longer any ‘epistemological abyss’
or ‘perilous leap.’ We have only to see how these two realities can participate in each
other. Linking thought and existence to life—this is the fundamental idea of prag-
matism. ([1913–14]1983:16)
For Durkheim, “traditional rationalism separates thought from existence.” The only
solution to this dilemma is “to refuse to admit the existence of this gap between existence
and thought.” He advocates a dynamic link between the two. Durkheim agrees in principle
with the need, expressed by the pragmatists, to link thought and existence to life. However,
whereas the pragmatists solve the problem by making thought reality (which has serious
idealist implications), Durkheim solves it by making reality (that is, social reality) the
source of the forms of thought. In other words, social reality as experienced by the partic-
ipants who enact that reality gives rise to the fundamental categories of thought.
The positions of Durkheim and pragmatism are so close on this point that it is essential
to see that they are mirror opposites. The interpretation of Durkheim as arguing that social
reality, in the form of representations, is a collection of ideas obscures these differences
and gives his position idealist overtones similar to pragmatism, even though he begins
with society and they begin with the individual. It is critical to see that Durkheim distin-
guishes between social reality as a cosmology of ideas and those concrete social practices
which create in persons, in and through their participation in them, the six basic categories
of thought. It is the latter that are the source of reality for Durkheim; the former only
represent or symbolize that reality.
Durkheim considers the social and social action to be the reality that generates thought.
He will argue that it is a consequence of treating individual action as the ultimate reality
which turns utility into the ultimate criterion of truth for James. Durkheim argues that the
relativity implied in equating truth with utility flies both in the face of experience and in
the face of necessity. We need truth and logic, Durkheim argues. After all, James’s own
argument involves some pretty sophisticated logic (this criticism is worked out in detail in
the Fifth Lecture [(1913–14)1983:32]). Durkheim argues that persons “feel” strongly that
“truth” is not just anything we want it to be. There is an external resistance experienced
with regard to truth that goes beyond mere utility. That is, persons cannot always make
something true simply by wanting it to be true or because it works and is of benefit to
them. The “truth,” Durkheim says, produces a resistance to such assertions which is felt as
having an “external” origin.
Durkheim argues that pragmatism leaves the possibility of reason and truth still needing
to be explained because it has placed the problem of truth at the level of the individual.
Durkheim argues that reason and truth can only be explained in relation to the concrete
collective social processes that give rise to them and which have their basis in necessity.
Thus, Durkheim is not a traditional rationalist because he does not separate thought
from reality. But he does not end up with relativity and variable truth either, as do the
pragmatists, because the reality underlying the essential ideas (or categories) is for Durkheim
concrete and observes natural laws (that is, the natural laws of social organization, which
he argues are a species of natural law).
Both pragmatists and Durkheimian sociologists reject the rationalist premise that in the
beginning there was thought ([1913–14]1983:67). However, Durkheim argues that he can-
not accept either “the statement of the idealists, that in the beginning there is thought, nor
that of the pragmatists, that in the beginning there is action” ([1913–14]1983:67). He
argues that the truth of this relationship “has a circular character” and that the “analysis
can be prolonged to infinity” ([1913–14]1983:67). In other words, while the pragmatists
claim to have linked thought and reality through action, Durkheim argues that they have
also separated thought and reality, simply substituting action for thought; that they have
dynamically related thought to thought (action) and left out reality. Durkheim insists on a
true circularity: thought and action are twin-born; the actions that produce thought are not
possible without thought and thought, in the communicable sense, is not possible without
action. But the action that Durkheim believes produces shared categories of thought is an
external and social reality consisting of shared practices. Thought itself, however, once
generated, becomes individual and retains individual elements.
Durkheim allows that there is a sense in which what he refers to as “sociology” and
pragmatism both approach the problem of truth in the same way. Both want to make it a
more active part of life. But, he argues, pragmatists really end up making the problem of
truth static in the other direction by placing all of their emphasis on action; they also,
Durkheim says, place too much emphasis on the individual. Pragmatism “claims to explain
truth psychologically and subjectively. However, the nature of the individual is too limited
to explain alone all things human” ([1913–14]1983:67).
Durkheim asks: “How could reason, in particular, have arisen in the course of the
experiences undergone by a single individual?” ([1913–14]1983:67). He concluded that
the only possible solution to this epistemological puzzle was to locate the origin of the
categories of the understanding in the enactment of concrete social processes (Rawls 1996).
Durkheim maintains that “sociology provides us with broader explanations. For it, truth,
reason and morality are the results of a becoming that includes the entire unfolding of
human history” ([1913–14]1983:67). For Durkheim the concrete enactment of religious
ritual is the key to solving the epistemological problem.
According to Durkheim, the individualism of pragmatism is forced to accept the limits

of the old debate, inheriting the problems that individualism has always had in dealing
with the problem of truth:
For the pragmatist philosophers, as we have already said several times, experience
can take place at one level only. Reason is placed on the same plane as sensitivity;
truth on the same plane as sensation and instincts. But men have always recognized
in truth something that in certain respects imposes itself on us, something that is
independent of the facts of sensitivity and individual impulse. Such a universally
held conception of truth must correspond to something real. It is one thing to cast
doubt on the correspondence between symbols and reality; but it is quite another to
reject the thing symbolized along with the symbol. ([1913–14]1983:68)
Pragmatism is just another kind of dualism, according to Durkheim, claiming a dynamic

relation between thought and reality and then reducing reason and truth to sensation and
instincts. In embracing these limits, pragmatism loses the possibility of truth. Pragmatism
is also, according to Durkheim, just another kind of idealism. It claims to be based on
“action,” but the action is in fact thought (and individual thought at that); and even though
the criterion for truth is now utility instead of the rationalist criteria that idealists usually
aspire to, it is a utility of individual ideas only and therefore idealist nevertheless.
5. The Logic of Concepts

While the argument that concepts and thought have a basic incompatibility is an old one,
the problem remains as important to contemporary theory as it was for Durkheim and
James. In considering James’s approach to this problem, Durkheim rejected the idea that,
in order to form concepts, thoughts (action) must be forced into conceptual boxes in which
they do not fit: “Concepts are [for James] something stable.” This creates a dilemma,
because the world of perception is unstable: “In order to express movement and change,
each concept would have to express one of the states through which the movement passes.
But, to resolve the movement into states is to make of it something fixed. The concept can
therefore express movement only by stopping it at a given instant, by immobilizing it”
([1913–14]1983:30).
According to Durkheim this is a species of Zeno’s paradox ([1913–14]1983:30). That
is, if the different points of space are discontinuous and infinite and one has to pass through
each one to get to the next, then one cannot move. However, if space is continuist then we
cannot talk about it because the concepts we must use in speaking are necessarily finite.
It is not clear in this section whether Durkheim is leveling criticisms against James or
whether they are James’s criticisms against intellectualism. The available student notes at
this point do not keep the two issues distinct. However, in the concluding paragraphs to the
lecture it becomes clear that Durkheim understands James to have criticized intellectual-
ism in terms similar to his own. However, it is also clear that Durkheim considers James
himself to have taken the position that the discontinuous cannot act on the continuous.
What has been lost from the lecture seems to be the characterization of the distinction
between James and intellectualism, which James clearly made and to which Durkheim
must have been referring. The argument is still important, however, for the criticisms
Durkheim makes of James’s inconsistencies with regard to his “continuist” position.
According to Durkheim, pragmatism is a philosophy of action that seeks to join action
to thought. Yet James acknowledges that concepts are incompatible with action (apparent-
ly both James and the intellectualists argue this). According to Durkheim, James argues
that “distinctions are isolators” ([1913–14]1983:31).8 As a consequence, “a fortiori, life
itself cannot be converted into concepts, since ‘the essence of life is its continuously
changing character’ ” ([1913–14]1983:31). According to Durkheim, the pragmatists attempt
to overcome this problem by arguing that reality is a “network of influences,” that it is both
continuist and discontinuist at the same time: “My thought acts on my body; it animates it.
A movement of my body exteriorizes this thought, and by means of this intermediary my
thought communicates with that of others” ([1913–14]1983:31).
This requires, as do other aspects of pragmatism, the interpenetration of action and
ideas. But, intellectualism denies this possibility. According to Durkheim, James main-
tains that “intellectualism denies . . . that finite things can act on one another, for all things,
once translated into concepts, remain shut up to themselves” ([1913–14]1983:31). James’s
solution, according to Durkheim, is to argue that the dynamic relation of action generates
thoughts that are not concepts in the intellectualist sense, because they are pragmatic and
deal with particular action solutions to obstacles.
On the one hand, James insists that reality cannot be reduced to concepts, and on the
other hand that reality, in the form of individual action, is thought. Yet, according to
Durkheim, James also argues that “life itself cannot be converted into concepts, since ‘the
essence of life is its continuously changing character’ ” ([1913–14]1983:31). This seems
to be the reason why, for James, physical external reality cannot be the origin of the
concepts. James makes the argument that concepts are finite and definite, but reality is
infinite and indeterminate, therefore concepts cannot refer to reality: “Concepts ‘make the
whole notion of a causal influence between finite things incomprehensible’ ” ([1913–
14]1983:31). This would seem to damage James’ claim to have overcome this dilemma
through a dynamic action relation.
If concepts are of a different nature from reality, then concepts cannot apply to that
reality: “From the point of view of conceptual logic, all distinctions are ‘isolators’ ”; “Con-
ceptual thought lives by distinctions, while the world is continuous” ([1913–14]1983:31).
The intellectualist position on reason is problematic: “Inevitably, James says, ‘Logic being
the lesser thing . . . must succumb to reality” ([1913–14]1983:32 [James 1909:207]). It is
hard to see how any thought, on James’s view, could escape this dilemma.
Durkheim agrees with the critique of intellectualism. However, he goes on to say that
“the gravity of this consequence helps us to perceive a deficiency no less grave in James’
thought” ([1913–14]1983:32). That is, after drawing the conclusion that logic must “suc-
cumb to reality,” which would presumably render it completely contingent to the separate
realities created by the individual creating consciousnesses, James himself uses logic.
Having argued that there is no relation between concepts and an ever-changing prag-
matist reality, the pragmatists cannot escape completely from concepts and the logic of
concepts. Durkheim writes: “When James tells us that one cannot make something con-
tinuous from something discontinuous, is he not using a logical principle?” ([1913–
14]1983:32). In other words, in making his argument that concepts have no validity in his
system James is forced to use not only concepts but principles of logic that he has argued
have no validity. It is something of a paradox for James. Durkheim argues that in this
James has taken a position similar to that of Bergson ([1913–14]1983:32).
If the principle of identity does not apply to reality, how can it serve as a guide: “He
does not explain to us how it happens that logical thought, based on the principle of
8
Throughout this and other sections, Durkheim “quotes” James without naming sources. These “quotes” are
marked as such in the text, but sources were generally not named by Durkheim. Whenever sources could be
identified I have given the citation to James. Otherwise they have to be understood as Durkheim’s verbal pre-
sentation of points in James’s text offered to his seminar on pragmatism as quotes from James.
identity, can serve to guide us in the midst of things to which, according to him, the
principle of identity does not apply” ([1913–14]1983:32). Durkheim goes on to point out
a basic inconsistency in pragmatism: “Actually, none of the pragmatists really thinks that
conceptual thought is useless, even though it is not a copy of reality. . . . But [Durkheim
asks] how can conceptual thought play this role if it has no common measure with reali-
ty?” ([1913–14]1983:32).
The implication is that while James is right in rejecting the notion of concepts embodied
in “intellectualism,” it is nevertheless necessary to make use of concepts and logic. There-
fore, logical concepts must have a source that is compatible with the dynamic link between
social thought and social reality (Durkheim’s translation of pragmatism’s dynamic action
link between thought and reality). This source, as Durkheim argued in The Elementary
Forms, is in the achieved (lived) experience of participating in enacted ritual practice.
Social practices are in an important sense finite. They have natural beginnings and ends
and are intentional in their own right: meanings are part of what they are, not something
artificially imposed on them. If one takes enacted social practice as a reality that generates
concepts, those concepts can be said to naturally correspond to those social practices, thus
overcoming the incompatibility between concepts and reality via a dynamic relation of
social action. Consequently, while Durkheim applauds James’s rejection of intellectual-
ism, he points out that James’s position itself falls into the same dilemma, while Durkheim’s
own position does not.
6. Radical Empiricism
In the Sixth Lecture Durkheim raises the question of why James calls his philosophy
radical empiricism, and makes a comparison between James and Hume ([1739]1978, [1777]
1975). He writes that “The intention, James himself tells us, is to distinguish it [pragma-
tism] ‘from the doctrine of mental atoms which the word “empiricism” so often suggests’—
and in particular from the empiricism of Hume, which believes that it restricts itself to
reality by refusing to admit any links at all between things” ([1913–14]1983:34).
Durkheim says that “in Hume’s view, experience consists of heterogeneous, and con-
sequently unrelated, elements, and is pure discontinuity and chaos”; for Hume, “each
act of perception is a distinct ‘existence,’ and ‘the mind never perceives any real con-
nection among distinct existences’ ” ([1913–14]1983:34). Durkheim refers to Hume’s em-
piricism as a “discontinuist doctrine,” as opposed to James’s empiricism, which, by
contrast, is a continuist doctrine ([1913–14]1983:34). For James, perception is one con-
tinuous “flux” wherein perceptions cannot be separated; whereas, for Hume it is an indef-
inite series of discrete and unconnected impressions whose connection in thought requires
explanation.
Durkheim argues that in criticizing Hume’s discontinuist premise, and substituting
a continuist doctrine, James has failed to consider some forms of idealism, specifically that
of Hamelin (1911), which are also discontinuist doctrines and yet escape the problems
inherent in Hume’s position ([1913–14]1983:34). In the case of Hamelin’s idealism,
Durkheim argues, the discontinuist elements of existence are concepts rather than impres-
sions of external reality, as they were for Hume. Therefore, on this view, the separate
elements of reality do not owe their unity to an external source (the human mind), as they
did for Hume, but to an internal source (the human mind), as they do in pragmatism.
Therefore, Durkheim argues, radical idealism, as represented by Hamelin, “is perhaps
only another way of expressing the continuist hypothesis of radical empiricism,” as expressed
by James, and one which James has overlooked ([1913–14]1983:35). For radical idealism
(at least of the Hamelin variety) “reality has an immanent unity” which is similar in essen-
tial respects to James’s radical empiricism ([1913–14]1983:35): Both collapse into the
mind. Durkheim criticizes James for not realizing that his radical empiricist position is
essentially idealist.
7. Consciousness Requires Resistance
James incurs the problem of how to separate perceptions, which could be as serious as
Hume’s problem of how to connect them. His solution is to argue that they can only be
separated and organized in thought through the individual response to problematic situa-
tions. In translating thought into action the pragmatist argues that thought comes into
being only when an obstacle is confronted and action becomes necessary. Reflection and
thought only occur when we are at a crossroads, when something is incomplete, or a
decision has to be made ([1913–14]1983:37–38). Then, and only then, do persons become
conscious. Thus, action (individual action) is the source of consciousness.
Durkheim says that according to the pragmatist “That which is finished, fully achieved,
serves to anesthetize consciousness” ([1913–14]1983:38). Only the incomplete or prob-
lematic produces action and thereby thought; thus, the pragmatist argument that thought is
action and that its purpose is utility. It is only when something is incomplete that we are
moved to think in order to complete it.
While Durkheim, argues that James does not succeed in overcoming the duality of
thought and reality through action, he appears to agree in principle with the argument that
persons can only come to consciousness when confronted by resistance.
According to Durkheim, the pragmatist argues that “we try to bring the situation to an
end and to re-establish the lost equilibrium” ([1913–14]1983:38). For the pragmatist, “the
function of thought, far from being to express what is clearly defined or established, is to
bring into being what does not yet exist, to procure what is missing and to fill a vacuum”
([1913–14]1983:38). Therefore, once again, the creative nature of thought is asserted by
James: “Thought thus comes into existence not in order to copy reality, but to change it”;
from a pragmatist perspective, the function of thought “is not speculative, but primarily
practical” ([1913–14]1983:38).
This conception of consciousness as appearing in response to obstacles leads directly to
the idea of utility: “Consequently, it can be said that the appearance of consciousness is a
response to practical ends, for it comes into being to re-establish the disturbed equilib-
rium” ([1913–14]1983:79). It is the practical ends of the individual that give rise to thought
when thwarted. “The same applies to habits of all kinds: consciousness disappears when it
no longer serves a purpose. It only awakes when habit is disrupted, when a process of
non-adaption occurs” ([1913–14]1983:79).
The lecture is reminiscent of Garfinkel’s (1967) notion of “noticings” or “breachings,”
wherein social order is only revealed when it becomes problematic ([1913–14]1983:38).
Except that for Durkheim and Garfinkel it is social order which is revealed, whereas for
James it is the individual consciousness. In addition, what Garfinkel and conversational
analysis show is that the problematic nature of interactions usually remains at, and is
solved at, the level of the taken-for-granted and does not “rise” to consciousness as James
suggests. Even for the researcher, social orders can only be brought into focus for study
when their features become “noticeable.” In the course of ordinary activities they will
generally remain invisible even when problematic for participants. Even “noticeables”
generally get narrative explanations, and are not understood as problems in the course of
their details.
8. Necessity and Freedom

From James’s perspective, society must impose conformity on the individual creative
mind or else there would be no communication between persons ([1913–14]1983:57). The
problem, in James’s view, is how “mental agreement” can be achieved between so many
individual perspectives all overlaying their own categories on experience. According to
Durkheim, the solution to this problem for pragmatism will be society: “What will bring
about and strengthen mental agreement more than anything else is the action of society”;
society must exert pressure in order to maintain this “consensus of opinion” ([1913–
14]1983:57). It is interesting that this view of external constraint, so often mistakenly
attributed to Durkheim, is part of his criticism of James. James’s position promotes a very
Hobbesian view of social constraint:
Once this ‘consensus of opinion’ has been established, once this ‘great stage of
equilibrium in the human mind’s development’ which James calls ‘the stage of com-
mon sense’ has been reached, society exerts pressure towards imposing a certain
intellectual conformism. ([1913–14]1983:57)
If truths remained individual they would continually clash with each other. Therefore,
society sanctions a certain standard of truth. This is a nominal view because the truth
sanctioned by society is completely arbitrary. James’s argument bears some similarity to
Hobbes’s argument that a sovereign is necessary in order to establish a standard of truth,
which will be that of the mind of the sovereign (although Hobbes doesn’t explain how that
mind and its contents are communicated to the other minds which must copy it). For
James, society, in conformity with the principle of utility, designates which concepts will
be considered truth.
Thus, persons are caught between necessity and freedom, between the boundaries of
acquired, socially defined truth and perception, which is creative, continuous, and unlim-
ited. This tension is the essence of pragmatism, and also of postmodernism and poststruc-
turalism:
There is, in short, a double notion in the world of pragmatism—a notion of necessity,
of determination, and a current of freedom, of non-determination. The necessity is
due to (1) the internal and external order of sensations and perceptions; (2) the mass
of already acquired truths. Our mind, caught between these two boundaries, cannot
think what it wants; and James stresses the idea that our abstractions are as inescap-
able as our sensations: ‘We can no more play fast and loose with these abstract
relations than we can do so with our sense experiences. They coerce us; we must
treat them consistently, whether or not we like the results.’ ([1913–14]1983:52–53)
The mind wants to think things that it cannot. Arbitrary but necessary social constraints
hem it in. It is ironic that James’s “free” creative mind ends up less free than Durkheim’s
social person, who is only constrained by the boundaries of experience, not by external
conceptual legislation. For Durkheim the mind could not want to think things that it cannot
think because the very form of thought is created through real concrete social experiences.
But for the pragmatists, concepts are external to the mind and can be experienced as an
external boundary to thought:
Parallel to this idea of determinism, however, there is one of non-determination,

which for pragmatists is no less important. What tempers the double necessity which
we have seen, and means that finally we are more free than we believe, is the fact
that reality, like truth, is largely a human product. ([1913–14]1983:53)
The individual creating consciousness makes possible a freedom of a sort, but it is a

freedom which experiences conventional social concepts as constraint. Durkheim, on the
other hand, does not think of the categories as boundaries that one needs to break free
from. For Durkheim the framework of rational thought is shaped by social practices, and
persons would not remain rational beings if they could break free.
It is only Durkheim’s sociology of knowledge of collective symbols and representa-
tions that corresponds to James’s view. Certainly the collective representations (not the
categories) in Durkheim’s sociology of knowledge are coercive in James’s sense. Where
they clearly part company, however, is over whether the individual creates the categories
out of their own sensations, or whether they come in the first place from society. James
wants the individual to have an out, a path to freedom, because they can make the catego-
ries themselves. If society makes them, for James, this is one of the two boundaries to
freedom imposing itself again. For James there is a further dimension of freedom and
constraint involved, because collective beliefs provide the very foundation for reason, but
are opposed by individual experience.
Durkheim writes that the pragmatists believe that “there is an original substratum, an
original ‘chaos,’ which we could reach if we stripped the universe of all the successive
additions made to it by our thought” ([1913–14]1983:53). The parallels to postmodernism
should be obvious. This resulting chaos would be freedom. It is true that chaos, or the
abyss, is unintelligible, but it is also, from a pragmatist perspective, pure freedom. Accord-
ing to Durkheim, for the pragmatist:
The world is a ‘chaos’ from which the human mind ‘cuts out’ objects which it has
arranged, put in place and organized in categories. Space, time, causality: all these
categories come from us. We have created them to meet the needs of practical life.
Thus the world, as it is, is as we have constructed it. Pure sensation does not exist: it
only takes shape by virtue of the form we give it. ([1913–14]1983:53)
For Durkheim also there is an original individual level of experience. But precisely
because it is individual it is unintelligible and hopelessly particular. He does not think that
this level of experience has the sort of relevance that James thinks it has. For Durkheim
this level of experience is inherently incommunicable and unknowable even within the
same individual. For James knowledge as shared truth still has its basis in the individual.
The only difference is that it is now overlaid with categories that individuals have made up
to suit their needs. These categories cover up the original truth. Thus, freedom lies in
deconstructing these categories and laying bare the underlying truth.
For Durkheim truth and knowledge do not have their origins in individual experience,
but rather in forms of social life and the categories and experiences that the enactment of
those social forms make it possible for persons to share. Therefore, the original level of
truth is social and the categories are not arbitrarily overlaid on individual experience to fit
individual or social needs. Rather, the categories originate in authentic and important
social forms and truths. Therefore, for Durkheim society, in the form of enacted practice,
is the original level of truth to which we must return and individual chaos is just that—
chaos. Deconstruction, from this perspective, is the abandonment of human forms of thought
altogether, not a meaningful endeavor.
In Durkheim’s view the fundamental collective representations, which he calls the cat-
egories of the understanding, come directly from experience. They are not arbitrary, and
they are not overlaid on individual experience in order to control and form it. They are part
of individual experience in the first place and therefore do not artificially constrain it.
Individuals experience these categories directly and immediately in and through partici-
pation in concrete social forms, and all participants experience them the same way so there
is no need for conformity to be imposed. Conformity is guaranteed: It is part of the nec-
essary and universal character of the experience.
9. Socially Based Pragmatism

Finally, Durkheim considers whether or not he is himself advocating a sort of social prag-
matism that can be contrasted with James’s individualist pragmatism:
Thus, we come back to the double thesis of pragmatism, but this time transposed
onto a different level: (1) the model and the copy are one; (2) we are the co-authors
of reality. However, one can now see the differences. Pragmatism said that we make
reality. But, in this case, ‘we’ means the individual. But individuals are different
beings who cannot all make the world in the same way; and the pragmatists have had
great difficulty in solving the problem of knowing how several different minds can
know the same world at once. If, however, one admits that representation is a col-
lective achievement, it recovers a unity which pragmatism denies to it. This is what
explains the impression of resistance, the sense of something greater than the indi-
vidual, which we experience in the presence of truth, and which provides the indis-
pensable basis of objectivity. ([1913–14]1983:85)
There is no real external constraint in Durkheim’s epistemology because the model and the
copy are one. Persons experience the resistance of truth whenever they feel the “collective
effervescence” of enacted practices. The pragmatist cannot solve this problem because
even though we are the authors of our universe, in overcoming the dualism between ideas
and reality through action, we all create separate universes in which the model and the
copy are not one. Representation as “a collective achievement” is offered by Durkheim as
the only solution to the solipsism inherent in the pragmatist position.
However, this idea of representation as collective achievement has itself been seriously
misunderstood. Durkheim does not mean that in some mysterious way societies generate a
realm of arbitrary shared ideas which we then all mysteriously come to share. He means
that in and through collective actions we generate social forces which, when perceived by
those who are creating them, become six collective ideas, which he refers to as “the cate-
gories of the understanding.” They are collective because they are produced by the collec-
tive in action, because they are perceived in unison, and because they are ideas that represent
collective forces. Other sorts of ideas do not solve the pragmatist problem, but are mere
representations.
Durkheim seems to be considering the possibility of whether sociology can be charac-
terized as a kind of socially based pragmatism, in contrast to James’s individually based
pragmatism. That would mean that the action which creates the world is social action and
not individual action. It would also create the world through concrete, concerted (shared
enacted together) social practices, and not through ideas and individual problem-oriented
action. Durkheim argues that there are social needs which impel society to action that are
analogous to the forces which impel individuals to action. Only where there is resistance
do these come to consciousness from the individualist perspective. Only where they meet
with resistance, deviance, or non-compliance do they come to consciousness in the social
realm—are formulated in rules, punishment, ritual, and so on. Therefore, rules, punish-
ments, and rituals provide important clues to this underlying process.
Durkheim argues that individually based pragmatism cannot solve the problem of solip-
sism, and that it cannot deal with the issue of truth. If “peoples [are] completely free to
create truth as they will” or “society [to] transform reality just as it wishes,” then “we
should be able to adopt a more or less attenuated version of pragmatism, giving it a more
or less sociological slant” ([1913–14]1983:86). But Durkheim says that “a correction of
that kind would not be enough.” Finally, there are too many differences between Durkhe-
imian sociology and pragmatism to describe it even as a socially based pragmatism. Peo-
ple and societies are not free in this way to construct whatever ideas whim may dictate. He
argues that “ideas and representations cannot become collective if they do not correspond
to something real” ([1913–14]1983:86). The social needs underlying the social constitu-
tion of the categories are real, and in an important sense universal. They are not a matter of
whim and, therefore, the categories correspond to something real and necessary.
Durkheim raises the problem of intelligibility, which the pragmatists and poststructur-
alists do not. They leave it as a mystery how it is that persons use these imposed concepts,
how they recognize them and know what one another mean by them. Durkheim points out
that if representations do not have something common in their origin, or some basis in a
shared “social reality,” they cannot function as collective concepts. This problem is one
that pragmatism, even a more sociological pragmatism, cannot overcome because it sees
the origin of the social categories as arbitrary. For Durkheim, in order to be communicable,
the categories must represent real concrete relations occurring within society, which are
perceived by participants in enacted practices. Therefore, a socially based pragmatism
would have to posit an underlying socio-logic, social reality, or social facts, thus negating
its individualism (and thereby its idealism), transforming it into Durkheim’s position.
If there is no real truth, as pragmatism asserts, then society would have to conduct itself
with regard to a representation ([1913–14]1983:90). This is important because it is a posi-
tion that Durkheim does not like. Yet it is one that is constantly attributed to him, which he
in turn attributes to pragmatism. According to Durkheim, “if there is no objective knowl-
edge, society can only know itself from within, attempt to express this sense of itself, and
to use that as its guide. In other words, it must conduct itself with reference to a represen-
tation of the same kind as those which constitute mythological truths” ([1913–14]1983:90).
Durkheim argues that this tendency to equate truth (or reality) with representations is an
obstacle to sociology, which needs to deal with a sort of objective truth about social
relations. Durkheim argues that representations come from experiences of real social forces
and can therefore be studied empirically ([1913–14]1983:91). They are not like mytholog-
ical truths or narratives, as they have come to be popularly referred to.
However, Durkheim also believes that the development of sociology as an objective
science requires the development of intellectual individualism, and this in turn requires the
full development of individualism in society (which Durkheim feels was not well-enough
developed in his own day). Objective science requires a plurality of perspectives which
only the full development of individuality can produce. Unlike James, Durkheim does not
believe that individuals naturally perceive the world differently. For Durkheim, it takes the
enactment of social practices to make perceptions intelligible in the first place and the
development of differentiated social practices in a division-of-labor society to separate
perceptions again so that a plurality of perspectives are possible. For Durkheim the pos-
sibility of a pluralistic universe is itself a social construction, not a return to an original

condition of the species.9
Durkheim sharply differentiates intellectual individualism from pragmatist individual-
ism. Intellectual individualism in this sense does not mean “that everyone may arbitrarily
believe what he wishes to believe. It simply means that there are separate tasks within the
joint enterprise” ([1913–14]1983:92). Intellectual individualism is socially produced. In
the lectures Durkheim speaks of minds being finite, whereas there are an infinite number
of points of view to be examined. In a division-of-labor society with full intellectual
individualism, each mind can take its own point of view. This does not create “anarchy, as
would be the case during the period of the domination of mythological truth” ([1913–
14]1983:92). This is because in a science organized on principles of organic solidarity, the
differences are essential to the coherence and validity of the overall truth.
In the Nineteenth Lecture Durkheim compares traditional magic with modern Western
science and points out that intellectual individualism only appears to lead to anarchy if one
fails to realize that there are two different sorts of order at work. In traditional society
varying viewpoints would cause chaos and consequently cannot develop there. In modern
Western society, however, a diversity of viewpoints needs to develop. Of course, from an
individualistic perspective, the distinction between these two sorts of order cannot be
made, because individuals are treated as a primary phenomenon and would be considered
the same way in both traditional and modern culture. Only a theory of socially constructed
individualism can make the necessary distinction.
James is left believing that conformity must be the criterion of truth, but that it cannot
be achieved. Durkheim, on the other hand, argues that in the context of intellectual indi-
vidualism, the truth can be arrived at through a clashing of perceptions over the same (in
Durkheim’s case: socially organized) truth.
The pragmatists, according to Durkheim, argue that if the truth were only a copy of
reality it would be redundant. It would add nothing. On the other hand they believe that “If
it does [add something to truth] it is no longer a faithful copy” ([1913–14]1983:92). But
Durkheim argues that while the truth is in some sense a faithful “copy” of reality, it “is not
merely redundant or pleonastic”; the truth “ ‘adds’ a new world to reality . . . that world is
the human and social one. . . . Truth is the means by which . . . [civilization] becomes
possible” ([1913–14]1983:92).
Truth must be the truth of human social relations and the ideas those relations make
possible. It is only in this sense that one could argue that “truth” makes civilization pos-
sible. Because without the categories of the understanding, human communication and
rational thought are not possible, and therefore civilization is not possible. It is not that the
categories of the understanding are the truth, but they provide a shared framework for the
understanding which makes it possible for us to each have our own perspective and still be
able to communicate about the truth.
10. Durkheim’s Summary of Pragmatism

In the Twentieth Lecture Durkheim presents a summary of his understanding of pragma-
tism. He makes two points regarding (1) the discontinuist/continuist hypothesis and (2)
truth:
9
There is an interesting parallel here between Durkheim and Rousseau. In his lectures on Rousseau (1960),
Durkheim points out that Rousseau also argues (in The Origins of Inequality) that in a state of nature persons are
incapable of self-conscious thought. It in only within society, where individuals lose their innocence and become
corrupt and greedy, that they also become “rational” beings.
We recall that the pragmatists’ line of argument is as follows: truth implies the
existence of distinctions between elements; reality consists of a lack of distinction;
therefore truth cannot express reality without presenting as distinct something which
is not distinct; without, in short, distorting reality. Reality, like a mass, forms a unity
where everything holds together without any radical separation. What emanates from
one part has repercussions within the whole. Thus it is only in abstracto that we
separate one part from the whole. Concepts, on the other hand, are limited, deter-
mined and clearly circumscribed; and the world of concepts is discontinuous and
distinct. The conceptual and the real are thus heterogeneous. ([1913–14]1983:93)
Durkheim argues that while the real may not be totally distinct it also cannot be totally
indistinct, as James has argued. In fact, Durkheim argues “that reality, whatever it is, is far
from resistant to any form of distinction, and to some degree tends of itself towards it”
([1913–14]1983:94). There is a progression from an undivided state to a divided state in
reality as in social life: “in the cell of monocellular organisms, all the vital functions are so
to speak included . . . the same is true of the embryo” ([1913–14]1983:94).
Here, again, Durkheim is invoking his distinction between mechanical and organic
society: “Thus the primitive form of any reality is a concentration of all kinds of energies,
undivided in the sense that they are only various aspects of one and the same thing. Evo-
lution consists of a gradual separation of all these various functions” ([1913–14]1983:95).
Both Primitive Classification and The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life explore
in detail the natural tendency of things to present themselves as opposites. Durkheim
argues that this is partly a social phenomenon, deriving from the first division of things
into sacred and profane, but that the social division is helped along by the tendency for
things to be perceived naturally in terms of their differences. Thus, the natural contrast
between black and white tends toward their being placed in separate classifications and
thought of as possessed of different qualities. For Durkheim, nature presents itself to per-
sons as composed of contrasts, not as the undifferentiated whole which James asserts.
This analysis brings Durkheim once again to a mirror image of James: “We are thus
brought round to the view that what we are told [by James] is the major form of reality, that
is, the non-separation and interpenetration of all its elements, is really its most rudimentary
form. Confusion is the original state” ([1913–14]1983:95). For Durkheim, confusion is the
original, protoplasmic state of being, before human intelligibility and the development of
individual social consciousness. It is not a freer state than the one we are now in because
it is entirely meaningless, and it is not the true state of human thought because our exis-
tence as rational human beings can only develop in a socially organized reality. The fun-
damental separations and distinctions that make perception meaningful are not all arbitrarily
imposed: “The need for distinction and separation lies in things themselves, and is not
simply a mental need” ([1913–14]1983:95). Durkheim means that even a rudimentary
understanding of things requires the separation of things into opposites, the sacred and the
profane, and therefore the social forms which develop in order to serve this purpose are
necessary, required by the human condition, and reflect the concrete moral relations between
things.
The second point he makes in the conclusion relates to the problem of truth: “Although
truth is a social thing, it is also a human one at the same time. . . . truth, at the same time
as being a social and human thing, is also something living” ([1913–14]1983:97). Truth is
not something imposed on individuals, but rather something in which they are intimate
participants; “it [truth] is no doubt still superior to individual consciousness; but even the
collective element in it exists only through the consciousness of individuals, and truth is
only ever achieved by individuals” ([1913–14]1983:97).
Durkheim argues that if concepts express distinctions, the distinctions they represent
cannot be only mental ones ([1913–14]1983:96). It is society, or mutual intelligibility
between persons, that demands the development of concepts, not the individual mind.
Therefore classifications must specify recognizable, publically available distinctions; “the
expression of reality, however, does have a truly useful function, for it is what makes
societies, although it could equally well be said that it also derives from them” ([1913–
14]1983:97). The development and enactment of social distinction is necessary for the
development of rational thought.
Truth is a norm for thought. There is an obligatory nature to truth ([1913–14]1983:98).
But, it is not obligatory in the pragmatist sense of a narrative imposed on a consciousness
that could be intelligibly organized without it. It is obligatory, for Durkheim, because these
are the categories that social life has developed in persons through “intimate participation”
in enacted practices, and only with them can persons produce intelligible relations with
other members of a social group. Only with these categories is rational thought possible,
even within a single individual mind. That is why, according to Durkheim, truth and soci-
ety must be twin-born.
There is also one final characteristic of truth on which I have already insisted, but
which I would like to recapitulate in conclusion: that is its obligatory nature. We
have seen that pragmatism, the logical utilitarianism, cannot offer an adequate expla-
nation of the authority of truth, an authority which is easy to conceive of, however,
if one sees a social aspect of truth. That is why truth is a norm for thought in the same
way that the moral ideal is a norm for conduct. ([1913–14]1983:98)
CONCLUSION
While Durkheim’s lectures on pragmatism can be read as an important clarification of his
theory of knowledge—if they are interpreted in the context of the general misunderstand-
ing of his epistemology as a sociology of knowledge in which knowledge consists of
relations between systems of symbolic forms, instead of the direct experience of moral
force in enacted practice—the lectures have the unfortunate effect of further obscuring
Durkheim’s position. As a sociology of knowledge, the emphasis falls on beliefs and
symbols rather than practices, the position appears to be idealist and individualist, and the
distinctions Durkheim drew between his own position and pragmatism are lost.
The idealist understanding of Durkheim, currently in vogue, supports a relativist and
pragmatist, or poststructuralist, postmodern interpretation of his theory of knowledge.
Beliefs and symbols are emphasized, while concrete practices appear as holdovers of an ill
thought out positivist realism and fade into the background. Consequently, those parts of
Durkheim’s work in which he examined the development of collective beliefs and symbols
are enjoying a resurgence of popularity among pragmatist and postmodern proponents of
cultural studies. The tendency is to interpret the lectures on pragmatism as indicating
idealist and pragmatist tendencies in Durkheim’s own position rather than as a critique of
pragmatism, while the bulk of his work is still considered positivist and out of touch with
the “modern” dilemma.
Durkheim’s criticisms of pragmatism in the lectures are of interest in this regard as they
constitute his own statement of his epistemological position in relation to pragmatism and
idealism, both of which have come to be equated with his work. Both pragmatism and
idealism are ultimately individualist positions posing the problem of knowledge in terms
that assume the primacy of an individual knower whose ideas must somehow come to be
validly shared. Durkheim, in these lectures as elsewhere, forcefully rejects the individu-
alist formulation of the epistemological question and its consequences.
It might be argued that the appeal of postmodern, or poststructural, arguments for soci-
ology is occasioned by a failure to understand the inherent individualism in the postmod-
ern, poststructural, and pragmatist positions, combined with a failure to appreciate the
alternative proposed by Durkheim. When he is not misunderstood as an idealist, Durkheim
is dismissed as a “realist” because he argued for the empirical study of concrete social
practices. Certainly the dilemma of symbolic illusion in modern society is important.
Symbolic representations, art, film, computers, and mass media of all sorts, have replaced
direct face-to-face contact to an unprecedented degree. To the degree that the arts and
humanities have made inroads into everyday life in this way, it is appropriate that the
criticism of art and humanistic symbolism should occupy more of our attention than in the
past.
However, there seems to be an inherent assumption that an artificially and arbitrarily
created “reality” of symbolic forms stands necessarily between the world and human under-
standing. This replacement of “reality” by symbolism was always necessary, it is argued,
in order for individual ideas to be brought into harmony with the ideas of others. However,
the process has become heightened in “modernity” by the proliferation of symbolism and
the replacement of concrete interaction by virtual symbolic realities (Baudrillard 1996).
Durkheim’s epistemology offers a somewhat different view. For Durkheim also “real-
ity” is a creation. Without some basic concepts there can be no recognizable thought.
However, he argues that it is a necessary and universal creation, through necessary social
processes, not an arbitrary one. More or less the same six concepts, or categories of the
understanding, emerge from the shared experience of enacted practices in all societies.
These categories reflect the “truth,” that is, the necessary moral relations, enacted by those
social experiences. Consequently, Durkheim argues, both individual experience of the
natural world and social symbolism are epistemologically irrelevant. Both depend on an
underlying layer of categories, a jointly produced creation of social practice, that tran-
scends particular social relations.
In arguing this, Durkheim avoids the underlying premise of the postmodern dilemma.
The question is not how individual ideas become shared with members of a social group
(whether by external constraint or utility). Nor does Durkheim need to concern himself
with the idea that the necessary basic concepts themselves represent an artificial and only
symbolic reality. They are the direct experience of necessary social processes, not sym-
bolic at all. There is, as a consequence, no deep tension between individual experience and
the experience of the social, or between the real and the ideal. There may be a deep tension
between institutionalized social beliefs and the individual experience of enacted practices,
but that is not the same thing. Thus, for Durkheim, while the kingdom of signs is growing
in importance in modern life, and he believes that there may be a serious problem with
morality in modern society, the sociology of knowledge has political and moral signifi-
cance, but not epistemological significance.
Symbolic forms are still only a part, a derivative part, of social life. Without some
primary face-to-face interactions and without the enactment of recognizable social prac-
tices, according to Durkheim, the social foundation necessary to sustain communicable
symbolic forms cannot be created and reproduced. A great deal of meaning may become
embedded in symbolic forms. But even then a great deal depends on the ability of social
actors to recognizably reproduce the daily rituals of social life in their recognizable con-
crete detail in order for the symbols and their meanings to be recognizably achieved. It is
important to separate the achieved recognizability and experience of detail and ritual from
the apparently institutionalized meanings of “symbols.” Symbols appear to carry their
meaning from interaction to interaction. But the meanings they take on in any given sequence
of interaction are only partly colored by whatever they carry with them and vary greatly
from context to context and sequence to sequence. The enacted details of rituals are nec-
essary to create or recreate the meaning of symbols.
The essential question is whether symbols are treated as a primary or a secondary
phenomenon. While for the pragmatist the individual action relation is primary, it can only
be understood in the context of an external world of symbols. Thus, symbols constitute a
primary level of understanding. For the postmodernist and poststructuralist, this primary
level of symbolism creates the only “reality” persons can “know.” If symbols are a primary
phenomenon, in this sense, then the world is truly a symbolic illusion and reality has, as
Baudrillard (1996) argues, been “murdered” (even though, as he also says, it only existed
as a necessary illusion in the first place). However, if collective representations and sym-
bols are only a secondary phenomenon, standing in a subordinate relation to a primary
level of shared reason and understanding that transcends them, then the whole debate over
contingency, loss of truth, and reality has no epistemological relevance.
If Durkheim is right that social practices provide a primary underlying shared under-
standing through the development of shared categories of the understanding, then the
possibility of truth, albeit a truth constrained by enacted practice, is in fact within our
grasp. This truth is not the philosophical truth of the isolated individual. Nor is it a truth
about reality in-itself. The shared reality of the categories is also a created reality, achieved
through enacted social practice. Durkheim is no realist. But, within rather broad social
parameters the categories do fulfill the philosophical criteria for the idea of truth. This
truth is real, valid, empirical, fulfills necessary and universal social needs, and can be
subjected to scientific examination. It is not a matter of belief, does not depend on belief,
and does not turn reality into belief.
This issue seems to me to be of particular importance because the clash in contempo-
rary sociology between those who treat “reality” as symbolic and those who treat it as the
jointly achieved concrete experience of social practice is a critical one. If shared reality is
symbolic, we have a very different set of problems from those that accompany the belief in
understanding as a concrete achievement of sequences of action.
Durkheim’s lectures on pragmatism are of particular interest given that in contempo-
rary sociology pragmatism underlies the larger part of symbolic interactionist theory and
practice, including the interest in poststructuralism and postmodernism. The interpretation
of Durkheim as a “cultural” theorist of ideology currently being put forward by main-
stream sociologists is squarely in the pragmatist and idealist traditions as well. The major
vein of interactionism, which stands opposed to symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodol-
ogy and conversational analysis (and Goffman’s early works), continues a tradition on the
Durkheimian side of this debate. Thus, ethnomethodology and symbolic interaction, two
groups that are commonly referred to as “interactionist” and thought by many to be very
similar, in fact represent two opposing extremes in the discipline.
There are important theoretical issues of individualism vs. a collective approach at
work in this dispute between “interactionists” which the pragmatist understanding of “inter-
actionism” obscures. The differences are as deep and consequential as the original divide
between pragmatism and Durkheim’s sociology. Symbolic interactionists (pragmatists,
postmodernists, and poststructuralists) posit an individual and a world of constraining
ideas with which they are forced to negotiate.10 This is an inherently individualist position
10
There is an ongoing debate, among those who identify themselves as symbolic interactionists, between those
who identify with poststructuralism and postmodernism and those who profess a deep attachment to the focus on
practice, which was the mainstay of traditional field methods. However, even those with a commitment to
empirical “reality” have a general focus on systems of belief and their corresponding symbols. The empirical
details are sought as clues to an underlying symbolic reality. They are not usually considered to be important in
their own right.
that does not address the problem of intelligibility, or rather accepts interpretation and
ambiguity within a framework of institutionalized symbolic representations as a solution
to the problem.11
Garfinkel, on the other hand, assumes that practices at the level of local interaction
orders must be enacted and recognizably achieved in common; that the order of practices
is, “like a standing crap game, there before we get there and there after we leave” (Garfinkel
1995). He assumes that there must be an order to practices which is exhibited in those
practices as they are performed (not in their cultural residue, or in the beliefs and symbols
they give rise to, which is what sociologists usually study—and this is the big difference
between Garfinkel and sociology proper). Persons must learn to produce competent ver-
sions of shared practices in order to participate recognizably in society. Their “ideas” are
in this sense irrelevant; it is their competence to produce and recognize practices in com-
mon that matters.
The departure from Durkheim, which is significant, is in locating practices in the achieved
orderliness of daily life, instead of in institutionalized ritual practices, as Durkheim appears
to have done.12 However, Durkheim would no doubt concur that the essential feelings and
their corresponding categories would only occur if the ritual were successfully and com-
petently (that is, recognizably) achieved.
For these reasons Durkheim’s decisive rejection of pragmatism and his clear arguments
for why it is not a possible basis for sociological thinking need to be re-evaluated. The
current trend toward interpreting Durkheim within a pragmatist framework, with its implied
individualism, not only threatens to off-balance sociology as a whole, but leaves important
interactionist research with even less of a connection to the theoretical heart of the disci-
pline than it already appears to have. Garfinkel, for instance, is in an important sense
urging the examination of Durkheimian social facts through a study of practices, as Durkheim
urged, not through a study of beliefs and symbols.
However, because of the general misunderstanding of Durkheim, the relevance of prac-
tices to larger theoretical questions has been missed. Detailed studies of practices, which
Durkheim argued were essential to disciplinary studies, are dismissed as trivial, individu-
alist, or even as interpretive illusions in their own right. At the same time studies of beliefs
and symbols that are inherently individualist pass as significant studies of broad social
phenomena. This has serious consequences for a general understanding of the epistemo-
logical underpinnings of the discipline. It looks as though contemporary sociology is in
danger of substituting an individualist epistemology for a collective one. This would, in
effect, negate sociology as a discipline.
REFERENCES
Allcock, John. 1983. Editor’s introduction to Durkheim’s Pragmatism and Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
11
It is sometimes argued that Mead’s contribution to symbolic interaction prevents it from being an individ-
ualist enterprise. For Mead the social process was primary and gave rise to even the individual self. Social
process would certainly have to precede any self-conscious understanding in Mead’s case as it did for Durkheim.
However, this is a position directly opposed to James’s pragmatism. While Mead may have been identified as a
pragmatist, and may even have identified himself as a pragmatist with regard to the epistemological differences
between James and Durkheim, Mead falls on the Durkheimian side. I think that the introduction into symbolic
interactionism of James’s notion of problem solving, negates the potentially positive influence of Mead on
symbolic interaction in this regard.
12
Although a close reading of the Rules reveals that Durkheim allowed that social facts could be “unfixed”
actions, and a sensitive reading of The Elementary Forms will reveal that when Durkheim did get down to
describing the process by which social facts impact on persons, he described face-to-face ritual occasions and the
feelings that participation in these occasions imparted to members, not institutional rules, frameworks, narra-
tives, or beliefs.
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Durkheim, Emile. [1893]1993. The Division of Labor in Society. Translated by George Simpson, New York: Free
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York: Free Press.
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Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
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———. 1995. Conversation with author, Washington D.C.
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James, William. [1907]1955. Pragmatism. New York: Meridian Books.
———. 1909. A Pluralistic Universe. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
Joas, Hans. 1993. Pragmatism and Social Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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———. [1922]1966. The “Soul” of the Primitive. Chicago: Henry Regnery.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. [1958]1963. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.
Lukes, Steven. 1973. Emile Durkheim: His life and Work a Historical and Critical Study. Stanford: Stanford
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———. 1982. Editor’s introduction to Durkheim’s The Rules of the Sociological Method. New York: The Free
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Mestrovic, Stjepan. 1988. Emile Durkheim and the Reformation of Sociology. Maryland: Rowman and Little-
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———. 1997b. “Durkheim’s Sentiments and Hume’s Passions: Emotion and the Validity of Knowledge.” Unpub-
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Durkheim’s lectures on pragmatism, given in 1913–14, constitute both a significant

In 1913–14 Emile Durkheim gave a series of lectures on pragmatism in which he force-

Sociological Theory 15:1 March 1997

focus of contemporary concern. In fact, Durkheim’s arguments pose a serious challenge to

1. Why Durkheim Thought Pragmatism Was Important

2. Critique of the Pragmatist Idea of Truth

3. Ideas Are Copies of Reality

According to Durkheim, the individualism of pragmatism is forced to accept the limits

Pragmatism is just another kind of dualism, according to Durkheim, claiming a dynamic

5. The Logic of Concepts

7. Consciousness Requires Resistance

8. Necessity and Freedom

Parallel to this idea of determinism, however, there is one of non-determination,

The individual creating consciousness makes possible a freedom of a sort, but it is a

9. Socially Based Pragmatism

sibility of a pluralistic universe is itself a social construction, not a return to an original

10. Durkheim’s Summary of Pragmatism

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