Description

Emile Durkheim sets out to introduce students to the field of philosophy. Moving back and forth between the history of philosophy and the contributions of philosophers in his own day, Durkheim takes up topics as diverse as philosophical psychology, logic, ethics, and metaphysics, and seeks to articulate a unified philosophical position. Moving back and forth between the history of philosophy and the contributions of philosophers in his own day, Durkheim takes up topics as diverse as philosophical psychology, logic, ethics, and metaphysics, and seeks to articulate a unified philosophical position. Moving back and forth between the history of philosophy and the contributions of philosophers in his own day, Durkheim takes up topics as diverse as philosophical psychology, logic, ethics, and metaphysics, and seeks to articulate a unified philosophical position. Remarkably, in these lectures, given more than a decade before the publication of his groundbreaking book, The Division of Labour in Society (1893), the 'social realism' that is so characteristic of his later work - where he insists, famously, that social facts cannot be reduced to psychological or economic ones, and that such facts constrain human action in important ways - is totally absent in these early lectures. For this reason, they will be of special interest to students of the history of the social sciences, for they shed important light on the course of Durkheim's intellectual development. Foreword; Translator's note; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Preliminary Matters: 1. The object and method of philosophy; 2. The object and method of philosophy (conclusion); 3. Science and philosophy; 4. The divisions of philosophy; Part II. Psychology: 5. The object and method of psychology; 6. Faculties of the soul; 7. On pleasure and pain; 8. The inclinations; 9. The emotions and passions; 10. Theory of knowledge; 11. External perception and its conditions. The senses; 12. External perception. The origin of the idea of externality; 13. External perception. On the objectivity of the idea of externality. (1) Does the external world exist?; 14. External perception. On the objectivity of the idea of externality. (2) On the nature of the external world; 15. Consciousness. On the conditions of consciousness; 16. Consciousness. On the origin of the idea of the self; 17. Consciousness. On the nature of the self; 18. Reason. The definition of reason; 19. Reason. The material of reason. (1) Principles; 20. Reason. The material of reason. (2) Rational or first ideas; 21. Reason. Empiricism; 22. Reason. Evolutionism. The theory of heredity; 23. Reason. On the objectivity of rational principles; 24. Faculties of conception. On the association of ideas; 25. Faculties of conception. Memory; 26. Faculties of conception. Imagination; 27. Faculties of conception. Sleep. Dreams. Madness; 28. Complex operations of the mind. Attention. Comparison. Abstraction; 29. Complex operations of the mind. Generalization. Judgment. Reasoning; 30. The object and method of aesthetics; 31. What is beauty; 32. Prettiness and the sublime. Art; 33. On activity in general. Instinct; 34. Habit; 35. On the will and on freedom; 36. On freedom (continued). Psychological determinism; 37. On freedom (conclusion). Scientific determinism. Theological fatalism. Part III. Logic: 38. Introduction. On logic; 39. On truth. On certainty; 40. On certainty (conclusion); 41. On false certainty of error; 42. Skepticism; 43. Ideas. Ter