Ontological realism and political subjectivity in Durkheim: some Hegelian traits of the founder of sociology
This paper presents the hypothesis according to which Durkheim’s concept of society includes an ethical-political dimension that steers human practice while existing independently of sociological knowledge. Such ontological realism seems to be very close to Hegel’s objective idealism. Durkheim criticizes liberal atomism for the same reasons Hegel had in doing so, according to the similar conceptions they had of society and freedom. Both Hegel and Durkheim develop a republicanist concept of freedom, with an emphasis on the necessity that agents embody the structure of mediations of society – that is, the State and social institutions. This is made possible for the agents through the development of a mindful political disposition fuelled by their participation to a world of ideas fertilized by a faith in a suprasocial meaning.