Prof: Okay,
so today is about the notion of
anomie.
 
And anomie seems to be a very
simple notion.
Anomie means the state of
normlessness,
and therefore it's very easy to
interpret--it looks like it is
very easy to interpret anomie.
 
I will show that's far from the
case.
In fact, Durkheim has a pretty
complex notion about
abnormalities in the transition
to a market economy,
in the transition to modernity.
 
But before I do so,
let me come back to the issue
of the division of labor in
Durkheim.
Though he stages the book with
the idea of collective
conscience,
and goes long lengths
explaining why he's using law as
an indicator of collective
conscience--
and we discussed that at great
lengths--
when it comes to describing the
crucial differences between
mechanical and organic
solidarity,
he doesn't make much out of it
really.
 
>
 
What drives the analysis of
this distinction,
right, pre-modern and modern
societies,
to put it in other words--the
crucial criteria is actually the
division of labor.
 
What drives the story is the
division of labor.
So in this sense,
in fact, I think Durkheim can
be understood as being greatly
inspired by Adam Smith,
right, who also saw evolution
of human societies,
as you'll recall,
as a gradual evolution of the
division of labor.
 
Durkheim just does not offer
such complex or sophisticated
periodicization of societies,
like hunting/gathering,
and animal husbandry,
and agricultural and commercial.
He just makes this bipolar
distinction between mechanical
and organic.
 
But if you ask,
well yes there is a difference
in the legal system.
 
But what is fundamentally
different is the division of
labor.
 
Right?
 
Mechanical solidarity has
little division of labor,
based on similarity of the
actors in the society.
Organic solidarity has a great
deal of division of labor,
and a great deal of
dissimilarity of the action.
And this is puzzling,
because the question is,
if it is such a high level of
division of labor,
and such a great diversity,
where on earth solidarity will
come from,
how we hang together?
So that's, I think--we should
appreciate how important the
division of labor for Smith from
Durkheim was.
By the way, in some ways,
even the early Marx,
in The German Ideology,
also tried his periodicization
of society with the division of
labor.
So I think this is also the
influence of Adam Smith.
So I think there is a clear
Adam Smith impact on the work of
Durkheim, on the types of
solidarity.
There is also another issue I
would like to mention.
I pointed out how important,
right, Montesquieu was for
Durkheim.
 
And it's obvious.
 
He acknowledges his debt to
Montesquieu,
starts the book with collective
conscience and the notion of--
and law as the best empirically
observable indicator of this
collective conscience comes,
of course, directly to
Montesquieu.
 
But there is another less
frequently noticed impact of
Montesquieu on Durkheim,
and that makes actually
Durkheim a very interesting
author for us today.
As I mentioned,
he primarily has an impact
today with his later work as the
cultural analyst.
But in his early work,
he responded to another
stimulating idea of Montesquieu,
and that is the interaction
between social system and the
environment,
and the ecological system.
 
I went at some lengths in the
lecture on Montesquieu to show
how important it was,
and how unique Montesquieu's
contribution was--
how important it is for us
today, though he made it in a
very naïve way.
Durkheim actually has a much
more sophisticated and complex
understanding of the
relationship between environment
and society,
and the type of solidarity,
and the division of labor in
society.
Unfortunately,
this is sort of a neglected
element in Durkheim.
 
Too bad because,
in fact, the problem of
environment and studying
environment should be a central
issue in economics,
political science,
sociology and anthropology.
 
And it is not quite as central
as it should be,
especially I think in political
science and sociology and
anthropology.
 
The study of environment is too
narrowly focused on
environmental social movements.
 
Well Durkheim has a different
interesting take,
which I think should inspire
social researchers;
be they economists,
political scientists,
sociologists or
anthropologists.
What is it?
 
Durkheim, in The Division of
Labor, has a core of an idea
what one can call the ecosystem.
 
Right?
 
He sees an inter-relationship
between the physical
environment,
the size of population which
lives in this physical
environment,
the technology which is used in
this environment and the
division of labor,
and the type of social
organization what we have,
what kind of social solidarity
you have.
 
Let me just put this on the
blackboard.
I think this is rarely noticed.
 
You will rarely hear in
Durkheim's lectures,
or rarely read about this when
you read about Durkheim.
So the idea is that you have
the environment,
you have the population,
you have technology,
and you have social
organization,
and these constitute a system,
right, which interacts with
each other;
and what ought to be studied is
really this whole system.
 
And, of course,
technology has a lot to do with
division of labor.
 
Right?
 
And that's what can be called
the ecosystem.
He doesn't call it this way,
but environmental researchers
would call it today as the
ecosystem.
And I think this is an
extremely productive way for
social scientists to think about
the problems of the environment.
Right?
 
And let me give you an example.
 
Why don't you think about
Southern California?
Right?
 
Southern California,
before the Europeans appeared
on the scene,
right, was a very dry
climate--suffered from the lack
of water resources.
So the Los Angeles Basin
probably could accommodate a
livelihood for something like
20,000 people.
Right?
 
These 20,000 people,
right, lived in this very arid
environment, used very
elementary technologies,
and had a very limited division
of labor.
So the population size was
greatly affected with the
technology and the environment.
 
And they had mechanical
solidarity.
Right?
 
That was the way how society
was organized.
Now today we've figured out how
to solve the hydraulic problems
for the Los Angeles Basin,
for the time being.
Don't hold your breath because
in no time we may have a major
crisis.
 
So in the same basin where
20,000 people lived,
now twenty million people live.
 
But they live at a very high
level of technology,
where we successfully pollute
the air,
which is, right,
hard to breathe in downtown Los
Angeles during a hot summer day.
 
Right?
 
And we have,
of course, organic solidarity
operating.
 
Right?
 
And we managed to screw the
environment, thank you,
quite nicely.
 
And we keep doing it,
in no time the LA Basin will be
uninhabitable.
 
Right?
 
That's why I think it is
interesting to think about this
Durkheimian idea of ecosystem,
how it interacts.
As I said, it would offer you a
very rigorous,
right, scientific framework to
study the interaction,
right, between social
organization,
the demographic problem,
the technological issues,
right, and its relationship;
how we can live,
if we can, peacefully with the
environment.
Anyway, just a backdrop
because, to show again the
centrality of the division of
labor for Durkheim.
Now today I will talk about
anomie.
And anomie is one of the
abnormal consequences of the
division of labor.
 
And well this is one of the
troubling aspects of Durkheim's
work--the whole idea of
abnormality or social
pathologies.
 
And he has been criticized
about this a great deal.
How do we know what is
abnormal, and how on earth can
we tell what is the normal state
of society?
Pathology does assume,
right, that social researchers
have some way how to judge what
is the healthy condition for
society.
 
And this comes from Durkheim's
early functionalism,
as I said.
 
Right?
 
He was greatly influenced by
biology.
He was not a biologist by any
means.
But as I pointed out,
the whole metaphor of organic
solidarity uses the human body,
right, as the example.
Right?
 
How in the human body diverse
organs depend on each other to
reproduce each other.
 
And therefore the word
pathology is also borrowed from
medical sciences.
 
Society will have pathological
features as well,
and there are abnormalities in
society--
and somehow believes that
social researchers will be able
to establish what abnormality is
and what pathologies are.
This is, I think,
troubling for most social
scientists,
right, because we seem to have
some commitment to at least
value neutral type of analysis,
right, in which we do not label
necessarily phenomena out.
Right?
 
We know labeling theory;
you may have heard about it.
You label something as criminal
or abnormal, simply because it's
probably unusual in society.
 
But what was abnormal in one
society may become absolutely
normal in another society.
 
So you have to be extremely
careful, right,
with the notion of normal and
abnormal.
Let's say being gay,
until fairly recently,
was seen--I mean,
except antiquity,
but for most human societies
and most cultures,
being gay is seen as a kind of
abnormal behavior.
Today very few people will
think about this,
at least in a country like the
United States,
that somebody gay is abnormal.
 
Right?
 
So what sexual behavior is
normal or abnormal depends on
the times.
 
Right?
 
It's really not the job of the
social scientist to be able to
decide what kind of sexual
behavior should be called normal
or abnormal.
 
The best we can do,
why on earth some people call
some sexual practices abnormal
and others normal?
Why is there differences in a
society, accepting some kind of
sexual behaviors and not others?
 
Right?
 
That is a question what social
scientists could study.
Anyway, this is I think clearly
a problem for contemporary
social scientists with
Durkheim's work.
But anyway he did believe that
he is capable to show that some
abnormal developments do take
place.
He was especially,
as I pointed already in last
lecture out,
on the transition from
mechanical to organic
solidarity,
and when that happened,
then pathologies could emerge.
And again, put it into the
social context.
Durkheim is writing in the
1890s and early 1900s.
He's in Bordeaux,
and then he's moving to Paris,
the city of the sin,
right, and he sees all the
signs of social pathologies.
 
Right?
 
Alcoholism and homelessness and
prostitution and theft and
crime, which was inexistent or
much rarer in rural France,
just a couple of decades ago.
 
So he's confronted,
right, with massive phenomena,
which is being seen as abnormal
or pathological,
and he identifies them as the
results of the transition from
mechanical to organic
solidarity.
Well pathologies can have two
different roots.
And what we normally understand
from Durkheim,
that he identifies pathologies
from the absence of rules.
That's what the term anomie
refers to.
But interestingly enough--I
have the citations for you,
and if you have read the text
carefully you found the
citations as well--
he actually also does consider
that pathologies can also result
from the overregulation,
right, of too forced division
of labor.
I think it's very intriguing to
see this.
Because we normally counterpose
Marx's theory of alienation and
Durkheim's theory of anomie as
Durkheim is complaining there is
not enough regulation in
society,
while Marx is arguing there is
too much regulation in society.
And I will give you a number of
citations now from Durkheim
which actually will show that
the difference between Marx and
Weber is not such gigantic as we
initially may have thought,
or generally would assume.
 
Durkheim is quite sensitive to
some of the Marxian analysis,
even to the Marxian notion of
alienation.
He doesn't use the term,
but he gets very close to it.
So let me just move on further
and talk about pathologies which
are coming from the absence of
rules.
Well, and I will briefly say
this interesting idea that in
fact division of labor can be
the source of solidarity.
As I said, this is
counterintuitive.
We did believe that solidarity
comes from relatively
small-sized communities where
people are relatively similar,
share the same values and the
same system,
same norms, and then they will
have solidaristic feelings
towards each other.
 
When people are very different,
they are competing on the
marketplace,
they are strangers in the
cities, they don't know each
other,
they subscribe to different
values,
or they even don't know what
values they should obey because
they are confused.
 
They just left the village and
ended in the big and sinful
city, and they don't really
quite know can I do here
anything?
 
Is there any control over me,
or none?
It's all up to me what to do?
 
Even stealing is alright;
selling my body is alright.
I see other people who do that.
 
Why don't I do it?
 
They are not being caught.
 
I probably will not be caught
either.
So that is a kind of,
right, under these
circumstances,
when there are no similarities,
why on earth-- we will be
solidaristic?
We don't know other people.
 
And we have these stereotypes
that in urban industrial society
we are not solidaristic.
 
Right?
 
There are the usual stereotypes.
 
You say you go to New York
City, right, and there is
somebody who is dying on the
streets, and other people are
just stepping over that person.
 
Right?
 
Who cares?
 
You can die on the street and
there will be hundreds of
passengers going by and let you
die.
It's actually not true. Right?
 
If you ever have seen anybody
feeling ill in Times Square,
there are usually a lot of
people who rush over,
that say, "Are you all
right?",
or this kind of stuff.
 
But anyway.
 
But you know the stereotype.
 
Right?
 
It's a usual stereotype about
cities.
Anyway, so it's puzzling why a
society which is so different,
anonymous, and such a high
division of labor,
can be solidaristic.
 
Then he defines various
pathologies.
And interestingly,
pathology one sounds very
similar, very close to Marx.
 
Well there is crisis in the
system, and there is increasing
class conflict,
and this class conflict is
pathological.
 
And the second one,
well--and again something which
is not all that different from
old Karl Marx--
division of labor can be too
excessive,
and too much division of labor
can lead to pathological
consequences.
 
And finally his unique
contribution,
that pathology can come from
the lack of regulation,
and that's what he calls
anomie.
Now let me work on this,
and also the concept of anomie
a little more.
 
So here it is:
the division of labor as a
source of solidarity.
 
Right?
 
He said, well normally the
division of labor produces
social solidarity.
 
Well but it can happen that
there are the opposite results.
Right?
 
So therefore,
he said, "When we know
when division of labor creates
social solidarity,
then we will be better equipped
to figure out when actually
social solidarity has
pathological consequences."
And as you can see from the
citation, he directly cites the
medical metaphor.
 
Right?
 
"Here, as elsewhere,
pathology is a precious
ancillary to physiology."
 
So you start with the
physiology of society.
You identify when it works
normally, and then you will be
able to show when it is
pathological.
Right?
 
That's the fundamental idea.
 
And this is,
in a way, how he tries to get
off the hook of the problem that
he's actually capable to tell
what is pathological.
 
All right, now the first
pathology is actually about
class conflict.
 
He said, well--and I think Marx
would not have been particularly
unhappy with this citation,
right?
"As labor becomes
increasingly divided,
there are commercial crises,
there are bankruptcies,
there is hostility between
labor and capital,
and then all these conflicts
become more frequent."
Right?
 
"Well in traditional
societies, in mechanical
solidarities,
well these class conflicts were
rare and unusual."
 
Well today they are not all
that unusual.
And he uses the term working
class.
Right?
 
He said, "Part of the
working class do not really
desire the status assigned to
them." Right?
Well not quite the theory of
exploitation,
but certainly an expression
that too high level of division
of labor,
in absence of other,
can create intense class
conflict,
which is a pathological
consequence of high division of
labor.
 
Then he goes on and he writes
about "excessive division
of labor."
 
Well he has not read the
Paris Manuscripts;
which was not published,
of course, for fourteen more
years after he died.
 
But, yes, you have read the
Paris Manuscripts,
and you can see these
interesting parallels.
"The individual will
isolate himself in his own
activity.
 
He will no longer be aware of
the collaborator who worked at
his side on the same task.
 
He has even not longer any idea
at all what the common task
consists."
 
Well is not this miraculous?
 
He could not have the faintest
idea that a work called the
Paris Manuscripts exists.
 
Right?
 
And here what is being
described is getting very,
very close to the idea of
alienation, right?
And in fact comes very close to
the Marxian notion of
alienation--not the Hegelian
one, the Marian notion.
Because he roots it into
excessive division of labor.
Too much market,
right, too much competition,
creates this situation.
 
So I think this is miraculous.
 
And very often these sentences
are kind of skipped over as a
kind of throwaway line,
by Durkheim.
It isn't.
 
It is very important to
identify what his unique
contribution is.
 
And this is indeed the emphasis
that a pathology can occur out
of the lack of regulation,
and lack of regulation means
anomie.
 
Well he said,
"Well it is not necessary
for social life to be without
struggle."
Struggle in itself is not that
bad at all.
"The role of organic
solidarity is not to abolish
competition, but to moderate
it." Right?
Well I just want to remind you,
this in a way reminds us to
Adam Smith, right?
 
His sympathetic theory of human
nature.
Right?
 
Well, unlimited competition is
not right.
Right?
 
Unlimited egoistic behavior is
not right.
We have to be sympathetic to
the other person.
Right?
 
We are struggling for
recognition by others.
Right?
 
That is the idea where there is
a similarity in Durkheim's and
Adam Smith's analysis.
 
But then he continues.
 
"But in some cases",
and this is crucial,
"the regulatory process
which moderates competition
either does not exist at all,
or not related to the degree of
development of the division of
labor."
It is insufficient.
 
There are either no
regulations, or not enough
regulations.
 
"If then division of labor
does not produce solidarity,
it is because the relationship
between organs are not
regulated.
 
And this is what I call
anomie."
Right?
 
And again you see the social
context?
This is exactly coming from the
empirical reference point:
Rural young people get on the
train and then get off the train
in Gare Lazare,
Saint Lazare,
and then they walk into the
street in wild Paris,
the sinful city of Paris,
and they are lost.
Suddenly their value system,
what they were told back home
in the village,
collapses.
Right?
 
Back in the village they knew
exactly what they are supposed
to do.
 
Everybody knew them,
and they also knew if they are
breaking the laws,
right, of the community,
they will be immediately
punished.
Because there will be gossip
spreading around,
and get back to home,
and mom and dad will exactly
hear what you have done on the
street,
what you were not supposed to
do.
Now you are in Paris.
 
Nobody has the faintest idea
who you are.
And even you don't know what
other people expect from you.
Right?
 
It looks like this is the realm
of freedom;
you can do anything. Right?
 
Well back home in the village,
if you were engaged you better
do not hold hands with another
partner on the street.
Right?
 
Because then the gossip will go
back to your fiancée,
and to her parents or his
parents, and your parents
immediately,
and there will be a scandal.
Well if you are walking on
Boul'Mich,
you can do anything.
 
You can hold the hand of
anybody.
You can kiss anybody. Right?
 
Nobody knows who you are. Right?
 
So that's it.
 
That is the problem, right?
 
Of anomie, that people enter in
a society in which they are
lost.
 
Well let me just labor a little
longer on the idea.
And here again see that even
the notion of anomie,
it's probably--I don't know
whether,
how much he's making his
argument too complex,
or Marx's idea of alienation
was too complex.
But you can see here again some
similarities,
even between anomie and the
Marxian notion of alienation.
He said, "The division of
labor may reduce the worker to
the role of a machine.
 
He's not aware of where the
operations required of him are
leading, and he does not link
them to any aim."
Whoa.
 
"Every day he repeats the
same movements,
with monotonous regularity,
but without having any
understanding--
interest in understanding of
them."
 
Well, how interesting. Right?
 
That's where,
in Durkheim's thinking,
the lack of norms or values,
the collapse of the value
system, leading to.
 
And for him--of course,
that's a big difference--
the solution is to fix the
system of values,
right, to fix the system of
norms, and then you solve the
problem of anomie.
 
But he also said that,
"Look, anomie is not an
inevitable consequence of the
division of labor."
Right?
 
Well he has a conception that
division of labor can be forced,
and can be excessive.
 
Right?
 
There must be elements in the
collective conscience which
moderate, right?
 
The competitive elements of the
division of labor.
But if those
institutions--cultural,
legal, moral,
ethical institutions--are in
place, then in fact the division
of labor will not produce
anomie;
it only will produce such if
there is no such systems.
 
But then he said,
"Do not read me as a
romantic.
 
I don't want to idealize the
village community,
where these boys and girls,
in Gare Lazare,
are coming out of the
train." Right?
"I don't want to send them
back to the rural village.
I'm not advocating a return
from organic solidarity to
mechanical solidarity.
 
All what I am showing,
under what circumstances there
are pathological consequences,
right, in organic solidarity.
And therefore we have to find
the proper medication,
the proper cocktail of drugs,
by which we can cure this
disease."
 
Right?
 
That is the key idea.
 
Well now another very
interesting argument;
which is usually neglected in
reading Durkheim.
He said, "Look,
there are pathologies in
society which are coming from
overregulation and forced
division of labor."
 
Well this is already in The
Division of Labor.
But a crucial text is in fact
the so-called "Second
Introduction into The
Division of Labor."
Durkheim received a lot of
criticism of the First Edition
of The Division of
Labor--was criticized of
being too conservative
politically.
And that's when he wrote the
"Second Introduction to
The Division of
Labor."
And if you are interested at
all in Durkheim,
you have to read the
"Second Introduction"-
the introduction to the Second
Edition of The Division of
Labor.
 
Because here he tries to offer
some,
quote/unquote,
progressive solution to the
problems of anomie,
and the nature of solidarity in
organic societies--
how to overcome the problem of
class conflicts in modern
society.
And there his idea is that
really these solidarities--
this is the idea he develops in
the introduction to the Second
Edition--
that we are becoming
solidaristic within our
professions.
These are the professional
organizations in which we will
find our identities and
solidarities.
So he actually sees the good
society as evolving into a
multiplicity of professional
organizations,
in which people fit into these
professional environments,
and do have a strong
professional identity and
solidaristic attitudes towards
the profession.
This is, right,
a radically different idea,
right, from the--it's not
dealing with markets,
not messing up with the
markets, or not messing up too
much with the markets,
to put it this way. Right?
Professional organizations,
if they are effective,
they do mess up with the
markets.
Right?
 
American Medical Association
does mess up,
because it's a kind of trade
union,
right, which makes sure that
the doctors' interests are being
particularly represented.
 
Anyway, this is the
"Second Introduction."
But what is interesting in this
citation is that he said,
"Well, pathology can
emerge actually from an
excessive level of regulation,
or forced division of
labor."
 
And he introduces another
notion here, and this is
fatalism.
 
So there are these two
different pathologies of modern
societies.
 
One is emerging in the
transition from mechanical to
organic solidarity,
given the absence of commonly
shared values,
and that's anomie.
And there is another
possible--on the other end of
the scale you have too excessive
regulation,
and then people become
fatalistic because then they
think there is nothing what they
can do.
Right?
 
Anomie is when you can say,
"Anything goes;
I can get away with anything.
 
Right?
 
Or you are desperate,
because you don't know what on
earth you want to do with
yourself.
Fatalism is when you think well
I have no control over my life.
I am over-regulated. Right?
 
And then you become fatalistic.
 
It doesn't matter.
 
Nothing matters because it's
overregulated.
Okay.
 
Now let me just very briefly
compare these three ideas of
Marx, Weber, and Durkheim.
 
Well I hope I did not confuse
you too much with some of the
citations, which are quite
counterintuitive.
But it's important to see the
sophistication of the analysis.
The bottom line,
after all, is he said,
"Look, my unique
contribution to the study of
pathologies of modern society is
the theory of anomie,
which says that temporarily,
in this transition,
we have a problem of absence of
rules.
This will be overcome,
because there is no reason why
a properly moderated competition
and division of labor could not
create actually very high levels
of solidarity."
And the mechanism,
he suggests in the "Second
Introduction,"
is creation of professional
organizations and slotting
people into professional
communities, as such.
 
They are not going back to the
villages,
but they will be sort of
belonging to professional
communities and having
solidaristic ideas and
identities there.
 
So this is kind of the bottom
line.
He is sensitive to the problems
what Marx is talking about.
He understands that yes,
modern society does create
class conflicts,
and this is a problem because
the working class very often
feels ill-treated--
doesn't use the term exploited,
but is unhappy with the
position assigned to it.
 
So he sees this is a problem.
 
He also sees the problem that
excessive division of labor may
create a sense of--he doesn't
use the term,
but really what he
means--alienation.
Right?
 
And he also is quite aware that
too much regulation also can
create a pathological state of
mind: fatalism.
So but the major contribution
is, as I've said,
anomie is insufficient
regulation in society.
This is his unique contribution.
 
Well alienation,
as we have seen,
is more like fatalism,
right, in Durkheim.
It comes from too much
regulation.
And then we have Weber's notion
of disenchantment,
right, the loss of the
enchanted garden.
This is all coming--the kind of
mood or feel,
the human condition under
modernity.
Right?
 
These are three different takes.
 
For Weber, it is the loss of
magic, right,
and in a way the conversion of
the dance and all-sided human
relationships into instrumental
relationships.
I think I briefly mentioned in
the lecture on alienation,
and probably also lecture on
Weber,
that this is actually very
similar to the ideas of Georg
Lukács,
who was a Marxist philosopher
and who developed the theory of
reification.
Weber is developing the theory
of disenchantment,
what is the problem of
modernity.
That we lost the enchanted
garden--
that we are too rationalistic,
too cold,
too instrumental--at a time
when Lukács is shifting
from Hegel to Marx,
and invents the idea of
reification.
 
And they happen to both live at
that time in Heidelberg,
and Georg Lukács,
who was a young man at that
time,
in his twenties,
was a frequent guest in the
Weber house,
in the salon run by Marianne
Weber.
So there is clearly a mutual
influence on Lukács'
unique interpretation of Marx's
theory of alienation--
that human relationships are
becoming reified--
and Weber's notion of
instrumentalization of life,
which is I think distinctly
different both from the theory
of anomie and alienation.
 
Okay, a final note on
Durkheim's theory of human
nature;
what was his theory of human
nature?
 
And here we can see a sharp
distinction between Marx and
Weber.
 
Marx, mainly following
Rousseau's line,
basically believed that--he did
not have the notion of state of
nature any longer;
by the mid-nineteenth century
people got tired and got rid of
it.
But he used the term species
being--what is the essence,
human essence?
 
Well he said essentially humans
are fine.
It is the society which is the
problem, not the individual.
So this is exactly the
Rousseauian inspiration in Marx.
Society corrupts.
 
In the state of nature we were
good--and Marx even adds--I
think I already made this point,
but let me underline one more
time.
 
He goes beyond Rousseau.
 
Because Rousseau saw the noble
savage as a savage,
as an individual who has to be
brought into society.
At that point Marx disagrees
with Rousseau.
He sees we were born in society;
we are social by nature. Right?
So we are not only good,
but we are also social.
And it is society which
corrupts us, which creates us
egoistic individuals who will
compete with each other and will
kill each other.
 
Right?
 
This is exactly the opposite,
right, of Hobbes,
and a big step beyond
Rousseau's theory of human
nature.
 
Now Durkheim is actually much
closer to Hobbes in his notion
of human nature,
because he believes,
right, that social pathologies
emerge when there is a vacuum of
control over people.
 
That's when you have crime and
suicide and prostitution and
whatever.
 
And therefore he had a
skeptical view of human nature.
Unless we are controlled,
then we can be evil.
Right?
 
That is the fundamental issue.
 
Right?
 
What you have to fix is making
sure that individuals develop
the proper value system.
 
Thank you very much,
and have a wonderful
Thanksgiving's break.
 
Yes, see you the last week of
the semester.
 
 
