When discussing Durkheimian sociology of knowledge,we must regard the fact firstly that Durkheim located his sociology of knowledge in his study of religion, and as a result it does not exist separately with that othe...When discussing Durkheimian sociology of knowledge,we must regard the fact firstly that Durkheim located his sociology of knowledge in his study of religion, and as a result it does not exist separately with that other enterprise. But this secondary location does have one virtue that it makes clear Durkheim’s methodology at the outset:treating religion as a necessarily collective and thus social phenomenon, he locates the sociological conditions of knowledge in similarly collective phenomenon. Religion is in the positivist tradition a less developed form of scientific knowledge, and all our categories of understanding flow from it, or rather through it, for religion is but the symbolic representation of society and a cognitive expression of the relationship between human social organization and its natural environment. But the treatment of knowledge as coterminous with religion, or at least the categories of knowledge rather than its precise content, leads directly into the methodological and epistemological difficulties, as Parsons pointed out, there is a fundamental tension in Durkheim’s work between determinism and voluntarism, and between positivism and idealism. These derive from Durkheim’s methodological orientation and his consequent conceptualization of society and the ‘social’.展开更多
文摘When discussing Durkheimian sociology of knowledge,we must regard the fact firstly that Durkheim located his sociology of knowledge in his study of religion, and as a result it does not exist separately with that other enterprise. But this secondary location does have one virtue that it makes clear Durkheim’s methodology at the outset:treating religion as a necessarily collective and thus social phenomenon, he locates the sociological conditions of knowledge in similarly collective phenomenon. Religion is in the positivist tradition a less developed form of scientific knowledge, and all our categories of understanding flow from it, or rather through it, for religion is but the symbolic representation of society and a cognitive expression of the relationship between human social organization and its natural environment. But the treatment of knowledge as coterminous with religion, or at least the categories of knowledge rather than its precise content, leads directly into the methodological and epistemological difficulties, as Parsons pointed out, there is a fundamental tension in Durkheim’s work between determinism and voluntarism, and between positivism and idealism. These derive from Durkheim’s methodological orientation and his consequent conceptualization of society and the ‘social’.
