Inhabiting No-Man's Land

Abstract

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.

Democracy and public communication: A Durkheimian lens on Habermas

“…This moral remaking can be achieved only through meetings, assemblies, and congregations in which the individuals, pressing close to one another, reaffirm in common their common sentiments. (Durkheim, 1995(Durkheim, [1912 There has been much theoretical work re-interpreting Durkheim's (1995Durkheim's ( [1912) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life in order to develop a reinvigorated theory of ceremonies and collective representations (Alexander, 2005;Collins 2004;Pickering, 2002;Rosati, 2008). Nonetheless, disagreement exists as to the analytical and causal priority between ceremonies on the one hand, and collective representations on the other.…”

“…There has been much theoretical work re-interpreting Durkheim’s (1995 [1912]) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life in order to develop a reinvigorated theory of ceremonies and collective representations (Alexander, 2005; Collins 2004; Pickering, 2002; Rosati, 2008). Nonetheless, disagreement exists as to the analytical and causal priority between ceremonies on the one hand, and collective representations on the other.…”