Citation

Keck F. Revue d'Histoire des Sciences Humaines 2005; 13(2): 33-50.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005)

DOI

10.3917/rhsh.013.0033

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Through a reading of Halbwachs' Causes du suicide (1930), a reflection is proposed in the relationship between the vital, the social and the mental in Durkhemian sociology. Following Comte's advice, this relationship is conceived not as a determination of the superior by the inferior, but rather as modes of inter-expression between different levels of the same reality. The reference to Leibniz in Halbwachs' work then becomes crucial not only to criticize Durkheim's conception of social causality as an intervention of collective consciousness into the individual body, in a cartesian tradition, but also Lévy-Bruhl's and Blondel's idea of a " primitive mentality " that confuses the vital and the mental when accidents of social life occur, following a malebranchist tradition. It is then showed that Halbwachs' leibnizian perspectivism helps him to propose an original answer to the problem of participation, that is the singular ways through which the individual acts in a social reality that transcends him without being exterior to him. © Ed. Sc. Humaines. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays.

Language: fr

Keywords

Accidents; Suicide; Causality; Optimism; Mode of life; Participation; Primitive mentality