Hello Big Apple - hello Germany

Dear NID & Temp,

thx alot for your pleasant welcome. We ´ll be discussing some of Durkheim´s basics.

On feast days, on the contrary, these preoccupations are necessarily eclipsed .
At this time, their thoughts are centred upon their common beliefs, their common traditions,
the memory of their great ancestors, the collective ideal of which they are the incarnation;
in a word, upon social things. So it is society that is in the foreground of every consciousness;
it dominates and directs all conduct; this is equivalent to saying that it is more living and
active, and consequently more real, than in profane times.

Con

-THE DREAM OF LASTING PEACE, WORLD CITIZENSHIP AND THE RULE OF INTERNATIONAL MORALITY WILL REMAIN NOTHING BUT A FLEETING ILLUSION, TO BE PERSUED BUT NEVER ATTAINED (B.M.)

In Antwort auf:

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If anywhere at all, this may have held true in those regionally confined "simple societies" that - idealized, and with all the problems such idealization entails - Durkheim pits against the "higher societies" of the ever less appropriate to the body's constitution.

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Dear Friends,

On the one hand, the individual gets from society the best part of himself, all that gives him a distinct character and a special place among other beings, his intellectual and moral culture. If we should withdraw from men their language, sciences, arts and moral beliefs, they would drop to the rank of animals. So the characteristic attributes of human nature come from society. But, on the other hand, society exists and lives only in and through individuals.

If we are to see in the efficacy attributed to [religious] rites anything more than the product of a chronic delirium with which humanity has abused itself, we must show that the effect of the cult really is to recreate periodically a moral being upon which we depend as it depends upon us. Now this being does exist: it is society. Howsoever little importance the religious ceremonies may have, they put the group into action; the groups assemble to celebrate them. So their first effect is to bring individuals together, to multiply the relations between them and to make them more intimate with one another.

Con

-THE DREAM OF LASTING PEACE, WORLD CITIZENSHIP AND THE RULE OF INTERNATIONAL MORALITY WILL REMAIN NOTHING BUT A FLEETING ILLUSION, TO BE PERSUED BUT NEVER ATTAINED (B.M.)