Durkheim on power and holiness

Authors

• Berndt Gustafsson

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67067

Keywords:

Sociology and religion, Durkheim, Émile, 1858-1917, Holiness, Power (Religion), Politics and religion

Abstract

Emile Durkheim has as nobody else brought together power and holiness as pre-requisites for each other. Power was holiness, and holiness was power. Power should here be understood as the ability to act collectively or on the behalf of the collective. Power comes—and not only for Durkheim- from out of the collective. The collective is, however, for Durkheim, holy, all imperative anduncompromising, unapproachable and incorruptible. The holy, "le sacré", is thus always of social origin and can only be explained sociologically. Durkheim may well call the holy for a religious category, but the religious phenomena are in themselves products direct from collective feelings, phenomena, through which the collective expresses itself in holiness and thereby continually celebrates and strengthens itself.