The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Content Warning: Durkheim’s analyses are based on early 20th-century understandings of Indigenous cultures and might reflect Eurocentric and/or racist biases, as seen most clearly in his repeated references to “primitive” societies. His characterization of Aboriginal Australian practices can be seen as reductive or lacking nuance by modern standards.

Durkheim introduces his project in the opening lines of the book; namely, to examine “the most primitive and simple religion which is actually known” (13), with “primitiveness” defined as simplicity and an independence from other religious traditions. This examination is not simply an exercise in anthropological curiosity, however—it is undertaken to understand the principles that underlie the religious nature of all humanity. Durkheim rejects the reflexive disavowal of religion, which was common among European social theorists of his day, many of whom would immediately dismiss religious ideas as delusion, fable, or wishful thinking. Instead, he proposes that religions are responses to real conditions of human nature, corresponding to deeply rooted parts of the human experience: “In reality, then, there are no religions which are false. All are true in their own fashion; all answer, though in different ways, to the given conditions of human existence” (15).