Compare And Contrast Emile Durkheim's And Mircea Eliadess

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1. Compare and contrast Emile Durkheim’s and Mircea Eliades understanding of religion.

Emile Durkheim uses a functional approach when understanding religion, the function of a religion and not a belief system. Durkheim looks at what religion does for society as a whole and how it creates social cohesion. Social cohesion is defined as the result of a community rallying around a totem, which can be a sacred object that ultimately creates a religion within society. For example, the traditional Christmas tree that Christians put up every year to honour the birth of Jesus Christ is a totem that creates social cohesion. Much like Mircea Eliades, Durkheim focused on the division between the sacred and the profane. The scared as the community, which brings social cohesion and the profane being the activities, those are not about maintaining community but about the individual. Therefore, the sacred and the profane are connected unlike Eliades. Durkheim saw primitive people as being closer to a more original form of religion, which ultimately brings out the essential function of religion. …show more content…

Through his studies he looked at a historical and phenomenological study of religion and observed patterns throughout the world, finding commonalities between religions and ideas within religions that are universally recognized. Much like Emile Durkheim, Eliades looks at the difference between the sacred and the profane. The sacred refers to something within a religion that is supernatural, beyond individuals in ordinary life. Where as the profane alludes to the ordinary life that individuals live. Therefore, the sacred and the profane are not related in the slightest, which differs from Durkheim’s perspective that the sacred and the profane are

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