Durkheim And Altruistic Suicide

Durkheim viewed society as a system in which individuals were bound together. He wanted to express the idea of society as he saw it, an institution that had various parts that were related to one another and developed in different ways. For Durkheim, society appeared to be something that existed in its own right, over the ideas and wants of its individual members. He expressed the idea of collective consciousness. The way in which individual thought and behavior is apparently transformed into collective thought and behavior. Whenever we take note of the behavior of others and modify our behavior accordingly, whenever we assume responsibility for our actions and so forth we are, in effect, helping to create a kind of "collective consciousness"

In this instance, suicide results from an over-integration of the individual into the norms and values of a social group. In this respect, it is the opposite of egoistic suicide, as the individual feels unable to resist the demands made upon them by the social group to which they are intimately attached. In a sense, a person's individual identity is submerged into the identity of the group itself. An individual who, for example, feels that they have disgraced the group may be driven towards suicide as a means of moral atonement. An example of this can be seen in the theory that Jesus Christ died on our cross for a purpose. He wanted to influence mankind into moral improvement. Taking religious sacrifice out of the equation and providing another example of altruistic suicide can be the idea of a suicide bomber. The purpose of sacrifice and death is bigger than they are. The individual is commended rather than

This was seen to be the opposite of anomic suicide and was seen to occur amongst social groups that suffered from oppressive social discipline and regulation. This form of suicide was considered to be almost non-existent in modern societies. Social integration and social regulation were the two characteristics that Durkheim claimed suicide was determined by. He argued that suicide rates will be higher when social integration is too high, this will lead to altruistic suicide. On the other hand if social integration is too low, it will lead to egoistic suicide. The same goes for social regulation. Therefore factors external to the individual such as, whether or not society is tied together, and the way society is regulated will have an impact on the rate of suicide. This idea is still present in modern day