Publications

“Qui est Durkheim?” asks Philippe Besnard in his introduction to the publication of Durkheim's letters to Marcel Mauss. The images are manifold: on the one hand he is portrayed as a “patron saint”, then as a “prophet” or religious leader, if not a charismatic figure, and on the other we hear of the features of the worried family father who dies under the grief of his fallen son André. Durkheim characterized himself above all as the son of a rabbi: “Above all, I am the son of a rabbi.” But who was Durkheim really? - An ascetic despot who swore his employees by the value of “work”, a fervent patriot and critic of the Germans, for whom Germany was “above everything”? And can these questions even be meaningfully asked within the framework of his own sociological approach? Do they not belong in psychology, which he so strongly marginalized, or in history, but not in sociology?

Prof. Gephart addresses these questions in an introduction on the sociological biography of Émile Durkheim.