Émile Durkheim On The Purpose Of Religion

There are many different religions around the world and many people take part in believing in those religions. People do not just simply believe in something without a purpose or certain logic behind it. Émile Durkheim addressed religion as a form of social collectiveness. The sacred and profane are the two separate components of religion. He also believed the essence of religion was crucial to understanding the purpose. In contrast, Max Weber viewed religion with an idealist approach, focusing on Calvinism and the relationship religion has with capitalism. The argument presented is that the ideas of Durkheim on the purpose of religion are more applicable in society in comparison to the theories presented by Weber.

Durkheim and Marx presented

According to Durkheim (2004), religious representations were collective representations for a group. The Church, as an institution, was an effective way to bring people together because it united the people, through beliefs and practices (Durkheim 2004). He believed that studying the essence of religion, or religion in its simplest form, was important to understand its purpose. He divided religion into two parts: the sacred and the profane. The sacred included religious myths, beliefs, and thoughts, whereas the profane was secular (Durkheim 2004). Rituals were used to show the power of the sacred. It is that very sacrality in religions that organizes function in a society (Oliveira 2001). An explanation used by Durkheim was the totemic principle. A totem was a symbol for people to materially express their collectiveness and a representation of a god (Durkheim 2004). Totems acted as sacred symbols. Totems were significant because individuals would internalize the important symbol and accept others who did the same as part of their collective life (Shilling and Mellor 2011). In general, religion presented a collective perspective of religion that an individual has idealized to belong to an “ideal” society (Durkheim

Weber proposed the idea that if God predetermined the fate of an individual, then one’s fate cannot be changed. That predetermined fate resulted in anxiety among people of Catholic belief. On the contrary, following the Protestant ethic meant believing in the predetermined fate but to relieve the anxiety and burden, people used their skills, provided by God, to work hard to prove that they would go to Heaven (Grosby 2013). The social ethic of capitalism resulted from the responsibility to use one’s powers provided by God, to prove themselves as the people who would be with God in the afterlife (Weber 2003). Weber noted how Calvinism, the spiritual element, was a religion that can motivate an individual to achieve success in a capitalist society, where capitalist ethic was a mental element (Forte 2008). The success in capitalism was possible because Calvinism, as a religion, encouraged a new path for a different work ethnic for people who wanted to perfect their world (Forte 2008). According to Forte (2008), there was an elective affinity between the Calvinist work ethic and capitalism, used to describe the closeness of the two concepts. It was the Protestant Reformation that allowed for the rise in capitalism (Grosby 2013). Calvinism discouraged conspicuous consumption, but rather, had individuals focusing on their energy into their work, making hard work a true virtue.