The Sociology of Emile Durkheim and Nationalism

Abstract

Both sociology and politics have a symbiotic relationship since social cohesion and political order have a natural interplay and help to define each other. The sense of common identity that nationalism implies is difficult to maintain in the face of a lack of internal social cohesion or the lack of a sense of collective being, as one with one’s fellow nationals and thinking and feeling like them and for them. Also, crucial to the maintenance of any order is a shared sense of legitimacy and authority, previously supplied by religion and increasingly undermined by Enlightenment values such as science. It is thus interesting to note that the philosophy of both Kant and Hegel, founding thinkers for sociology and nationalism, was based in a search for an Enlightenment basis for God, a rational God of authority and legitimacy to replace a mystical one.