Neste artigo pretendemos demonstrar por que a teoria durkheimiana ainda é relevante para os debates contemporâneos sobre moral e como a sociologia poderia lidar com a mesma. De certa forma, é um esforço para estabelecer as bases do que seria, hoje, uma sociologia durkheimiana da moral ou, melhor, de como poderíamos conceber uma sociologia contemporânea da moral de inspiração durkheimiana. Para isso, vamos primeiramente reconstruir os elementos ontológicos implícitos à sua visão da moral, destacando uma dimensão que é precisamente a que essa teoria é acusada de negligenciar: uma discussão sobre a natureza humana e as condições para a constituição do eu. Em um segundo movimento, apresentamos algumas considerações "operacionais" sobre o que esta sociologia durkheimiana da moral poderia ser hoje, apontando para o nível de análise com que ela pode lidar, para o que ela pode pretender explicar e - por que não? (acrescentando um toque weberiano) - entender. A etapa final nos leva ao território de uma teoria social normativa, que consiste em uma discussão crítica de moralidades patológicas, do ponto de vista do sofrimento que elas podem infligir ao indivíduo, e dos desafios trazidos pela modernidade tardia, caracterizada por uma multiplicidade de objetos sagrados que habitam o mesmo espaço.

Kinds of ritual and the place of transcendenceI feel very sympathetic with Seligman's article, his reading of modernity, his concern for rituals and their role in social life. I share his criticism of mainstream modern misunderstanding of rituals, and also his analytics of rituals, deeply inspired in turn by Rappaport's work, as Seligman writes in the article. So in a sense my observations and/or criticisms are simply part of 'family quarrels'.Let me say fi rst of all what I fi nd deeply convincing and fascinating in Seligman's article. First, as I said, is the general re-evaluation of the role of rituals in social life. Personally, differently from the author, I inscribe my work on rituals within a Durkheimian frame, but this is a difference unimportant in this context. Secondly, I agree with Seligman's picture of ritual and sincerity as ideal-types of attitudes towards social life, 'that must be continually mediated by the other', more than being two mutually exclusive attitudes. This is an important point, to avoid deep and useless misunderstandings. At the same time, it is obvious that Seligman's work is challenging because of its counter-intuitive nature, because of its emphasis on ritual, and its critical refl ection on the limits of sincerity. Further, I fi nd very appropriate and also fascinating the 'tragic' picture of social life that underlines Seligman's reading of the role of rituals. This is another very Durkheimian point in my understanding: rituals play a crucial role in what I called with reference to The Elementary Forms of Religious Life 1 a 'dialectic of limits': 2 we need to posit boundaries even when we wish to abrogate them; we need social norms even when they cause suffering, as Freud (and Durkheim more or less in the same years) understood very well, 3 and we are always kept in this tragic tension. Rituals are a way to deal with these tensions, not to overcome them for good. In this sense, as the article clarifi es, rituals are a way, maybe the best way, to deal with the ambiguity of social life, with its dissonances. Again, I fi nd crucial and convincing the author's emphasis on the subjunctive

Taking for granted a radical criticism of the universalistic value of a post-Protestant understanding of religion and of the nexus between political democracy and secularization, the article aims first at framing the perspective of multicultural jurisdictions within contemporary processes of change of religious pluralism on a transnational scale; secondly at framing that perspective within the intellectual tradition of legal pluralism; and finally at inquiring into the compatibility of the new conceptual constellation ‘post-secular society plus legal pluralism’ with a liberal frame.

This article is a translation of the Editor's Introduction to the new Italian edition of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. In it, the author maintains that though The Elementary Forms does not suggest how the experience of the sacred could be publicly recovered by citizens of modern democracies, it nonetheless recommends that modernity must remain open, with both courage and humility, to radical self-assessment in light of the centrality of ritual and the sacred to social life. The tentative suggestions to this end in Durkheim's work — the cult of the individual, loyalty towards democratic political values — are the best solutions available to us, though they are part of a way of life that cannot be satisfied either with its present or with its desired state, even when the latter appears fully consistent with its own ideal aspirations. Thus, The Elementary Forms points to the continued need for a more substantial reconsideration of modern Western identity.

Between 1960 and 1996 more than 4,200 books were published on the question of evil (Lara 2001a: 289 n.1). It is not difficult to understand why such a complex topic is so pressing, stimulating, and perhaps even obsessive. As Peter Dews put it: