Auguste Sabatier and the Durkheimians on the Scientific Study of Religion
This essay examines a significant, yet neglected, polemical context in the development of the sociology of religion in the Durkheim school: their consistent attack on the ideas of what they entitled the liberal or rationalist Protestant theologians. In reviews in L'Annee Sociologique—their “lab...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Published: |
1987
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| In: |
Sociological analysis
Year: 1987, Volume: 47, Issue: 4, Pages: 283-301 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This essay examines a significant, yet neglected, polemical context in the development of the sociology of religion in the Durkheim school: their consistent attack on the ideas of what they entitled the liberal or rationalist Protestant theologians. In reviews in L'Annee Sociologique—their “laboratory” for the gestation of theoretical notions—and in critical sections from their major works, Durkheim, Mauss, Hertz and others in the Durkheim school launched sharp attacks on the work of Sabatier, James, C.P. Tiele, J. C. Marillier, Tylor, Spencer, Reville, Richard and several others who worked from an explicitly or implicitly Protestant orientation. Their critique focused on the liberal Protestant emphasis on an essentially “individualistic” methodology, their focus on “subjective” modes of religious “experience,” their reliance on a variant of Protestant “illuminism” as the basis for their definitions of the essence of religion, their “progressive” theory of historical religious evolution towards the “higher,” more “spiritual” forms of religion (especially Protestantism) and their denegration of the collective and ritual sides of the religious life. The essay attempts to bring out these and several other differences between the two sets of authors, by focusing on a systematic comparison of the two central figures in the polemic: Sabatier and Durkheim. We attempt to recall Sabatier's great significance as the leading representative of liberal Protestantism in France in the late nineteenth century and compare his view of the relationship between religion and science (which he called “critical symbolism”) with that of Durkheim. We argue that the much noted Durkheimian “sociologistic” attack on “individualistic” and “psychologistic” approaches in sociology in general is much better understood when seen as a part of a conflict between alternative conceptions of the nature of the religious life. We briefly conclude the essay with a discussion of the relevance of this turn of the century debate to contemporary controversies in the scientific study of religion, and illustrate the historical repetition of themes by reference to the work of Robert Bellah and several of his critics. |
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| ISSN: | 2325-7873 |
| Reference: | Errata "Erratum (1987)"
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Sociological analysis
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/3710940 |