The Question of Hegelian Influence upon Durkheim s Socio lo^

Peter Knapp, Villanova University

Durkheim is commonly viewed as the founder of sociology as a n empirical or even a positivist, empiricist discipline. The connection between empirical sociological thenry and Marxist, Weberian, symbolic interactionist, phenomenological, herme- neutic, and other tendencies is illuminated by viewing the parallels between Durk- heim and Hegel. These parallels should not obscure important contrasts, but they include a large number of the most distinctive doctrines of the two theorists. The comparison illuminates relationships within sociology as well as relationships be- tween sociology and such other disciplines as philosophy, history, literary criticism, jurisprudence, theology, or ethics. The importance within Durkheims milieu of figures who were deeply influenced by Hegel shows that Hegels influence on Durk- heim should not be obscured by current views of Durkheim as a positivist in the tradi- tion of Comte.

In sociology today, the towering theoretical figures are Durkheim, Weber, and Marx. The space and kind of treatment introductory texts give the foun- ders of a discipline are roughly accurate, if delayed, measures of their per- ceived roles and importance. Although different texts give them different amounts of space, in eleven popular texts Durkheim, Weber, and Marx com- mand medians of fourteen, thirteen, and twelve pages, respectively (DeFleur, Hess, Hobbs, Lenski, Light, Robertson, Rose, Shepard, Stewart, Turner, Westhues). The runner-up of one text is often not mentioned at all in another and, in any case, commands less space (median, eleven pages) than the three preeminent theorists.

The kind of treatment a theorist is accorded is at least as important as its extent. A median of 46 percent of the pages devoted to Marx criticize or qualify his position, proposing it as one of several alternate views. Only 14 percent of the pages devoted to Weber and only 10 percent of the pages dis- cussing Durkheim criticize alleged errors or qualify their position in this way. Textbooks portray Durkheim as a principal founder of sociology as an empiri- cal, cumulative, scientific discipline. Their overwhelmingly positive picture is the more interesting for having come relatively late. Durkheim was ad- visory editor to the American Journal of Sociology from 1895 until World War I (Lukes, 1973:397). But throughout the first four decades of the twentieth century, American sociologists saw him as an apostle of the unsound, meta

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physical theory of a group mind (Parsons, 1968:ix). Until the 1940s, U.S. reviews and comments on his work were strongly hostile and disparaging (Hinkle, 1960). Only with a wave of popularization during the 1940s did Durkheim receive his present image (Alpert, 1939; Parsons, 1968; Merton, 1934).

While Durkheim is now a preeminent theoretical figure for American sociology, his portrait in secondary sources is narrow and distorted. Durk- heims popularizers in the 1930s and 1940s minimized or ignored political, religious, methodological, and philosophical elements of his thought that were unpopular in the United States and that conflicted with the individualism and voluntaristic nominalism dominant in the United States (HinMe, 1960). Such elements included his syndicalist quasi-socialism (Lukes, 1973:322-329), the more controversial aspects of his analysis of religion, and his claim to have founded a science of morals (Wallwork, 1972). Overall, the popularizers pro- duced an ahistorical, positivist, Comtian theorist practicing synchronic analysis of social integration (Bellah, 1959).

Selective attention to elements of Durkheims thought was buttressed by a highly selective picture of the sources and origins of his thought. This pic- ture broke Durkheims connections with neo-Hegelian, neo-Kantian, social- ist, and historicist currents in his own milieu. The new Durkheim is thus dis- continuous with Weberian Verstehen and Marxist praxis as well as with such other trends within contemporary sociology as symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, structuralism, conflict theory, and historical sociology. There have been important theoretical attempts to reconnect Durkheimian analysis to each of these five movements (for example, Falding, 1982: 725-733; Coenen, 1981; Glucksmann, 1974; Therborn, 1976; Bellah, 1959). But these attempts have been frustrated by the dominant, relatively one-dimensional conception of Durkheim and his relation to his predecessors.

The present paper discusses parallels and breaks between Hegel and Durkheim. The comparison can help to reestablish continuity between Durk- heimian sociology and other approaches currently contrasted to it: first, Weber and Marx; second, other approaches in contemporary sociology; final- ly, work in neighboring disciplines. Since Hegel is often misunderstood, part one not only shows key parallels with Durkheim but also reviews aspects of Hegels thought. The interest of the parallels does not depend on establishing the direct influence of Hegel on Durkheim. Nevertheless, the figures and movements that intervened between Hegel and Durkheim show that such influence cannot be ruled out.

Hegels system was encyclopedic in scope, entailing enormous internal tensions. He synthesized a great many contrary lines of argument (contra- dictions) into what he termed absolute knowledge. Those who rejected

HEGELIAN INFLUENCE UPON DURKHEIM 3

the final synthesis could and did use these lines of argument to fuel opposed positions. For example, it is well known that Hegels immanent conception of spirit allows both theistic (Fackenheim, 1967; Crites, 1972) and atheistic in- terpretations (Kojeve, 1969; Lukacs, 1978). Not long after Hegels death, followers split over using his system to attack or defend organized religion (Toews, 1980). Similarly, people drew on Hegel to defend opposed political standpoints, from chauvinist celebration of the nation-state through liberal limitations on the state (for example, T. H. Green) to socialist calls for its abolition. Finally, people could and did use Hegelian arguments to defend opposed positions about law, ethics, science, the intelligibility of history, the interpretation of meaning, and many other issues. Not only Hegels notorious style, but also the fact that internal tensions allowed opposing interpretations make Hegel nearly as controversial now as a century ago (Kaufmann, 1966; Lukks, 1978; Taylor, 1975).

The scope and internal tensions that make it hard to delineate Hegels in- fluence with precision also. made his indirect influence far more extensive and important than his direct influence. If we measure Hegels impact simply by how many people are styled Hegelians, it hardly extended to the twentieth century. When Hegel died in Germany, perhaps a half-dozen philosophers edited and explicated his works. At the end of the century, Diltheys writings signaled something of a revival, merging with neo-Kantian strands of thought and providing the main background to Weber. Outside Germany, several dozen major theorists, mostly philosophers, produced four main Hegelian and neo-Hegelian movements at staggered intervals in Eastern Europe, the United States, Italy, and Britain. They created few Hegelians except in philosophy, but Hegel was much more influential than is evident from any listing of Hegelian philosophers. Even in philosophy his influence came in the form of rebellions against him. Five groups of authors to whom Durkheim was deeply indebted owed the great part of their common ideas to Hegelian in- fluence: ( 1) neo-Kantian ethical philosophers such as Boutroux, Renouvier, and Hamelin; (2) idealist-positivist literary figures in debate with religion such as Cousin, Renan, Taine, and Smith; (3) socialists and especially the social- ists of the chair such as Schmoller, Wagner, and Schaffle; (4) the folk- psychologist Wundt and his followers; and ( 5 ) the historicist current of Ger- man scholarship associated with Dilthey, Windelband, Rickert, Tonnies, and others. The Durkheimian theoretical synthesis depended importantly on the common stock of ideas that he found among these figures. They are key to his relation to Marx, Weber, and other contemporary tendencies. The first sec- tion of this essay will outline ten social doctrines that Durkheim shared with Hegel; these are schematized in Figure 1. However, an equally important way in which Hegel served as the common starting point of twentieth-century

4 PETERKNAPP

theorists stems from the fact that key elements of sociology derived from nega- tions or refutations of one or another element of Hegels system. Thus, part two of this essay notes ten ruptures separating Hegel and Durkheim.

Hegel and Parallels wth Durkheim

As new disciplines emerged in humanities and social science, their pro- ponents felt stifled by Hegels systematics. The goal of Hegels system was to represent human knowledge as a unified whole, each part related to each other. But each part of his system became enmeshed in heated religious, politi- cal, and methodological controversies. The scope of the system and the con- troversies extended Hegelian ideas into the new disciplines. Although the ideas did not dominate any of these fields, they often coalesced with powerful critiques to establish major, persisting problem areas in many fields. From distant disciplines like religion, art, history, ethics, and political theory, Hegelian constructs reverberated upon sociology a generation later. Durk- heims generation was preoccupied with the creation of sociology as a spe- cialized discipline (Bendix, 197 l), but its central territory was the crossroads of numerous lines of intellectual influence, each importantly shaped by Hegel in the previous generation.

One of these lines of influence is Hegels concept of Geist. Geist is a rela- tive of such distinctive Durkheimian concepts as social integration, the col- lective conscience, collective representations, society as a sui generis reality, homo duplex, the constraint exercised by social facts, and the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity. The very different language in which Hegel and Durkheim state their social theories often masks the similarity of what they say. Whatever the correct philosophical interpretation of Ceist, it has very often a straightforward sociological meaning. For the social sciences, Geist is usually most usefully conceived as culture, especially political culture (Shklar, 1976:42ff.; Plamanatz, 1963: 150-204).

Hegel saw Geist as prior to and constitutive of individuals. First, the con- cept formulates the insight that objective, supraindividual processes shape and constrain human thought and action. Durkheim made the concept of objec- tive, supraindividual processes the center of sociology as a discipline, and he always acknowledged the crucial importance of studies by historians, folk- psychologists, and the socialists of the chair in establishing this insight (for example, 1887:37-42, 113-125; 1889; 1897a; 1897b; compare Giddens, 1970).

Second, Hegel used the concept of Geist to formulate and popularize ex- isting forms of social analysis. The language of Geist provided a terminology for the unity of culture and social structure, especially language, law, cus- tom, morality, kinship, politics, religion, and science. The postulate or issue

HEGELIAN INFLUENCE UPON DURKHEIM 5

Figure 1 Commonalities and Breaks between Durkheim and Hegel.

I. Ideas that Durkheim shared with Hegel

1. Objective, supraindividual processes shape and constrain human thought and action.

2 . They include language, law, custom, morality, kinship, politics, re- ligion, and science.

3. They form an integrated, historically developing system. 4. They form a functional system; nothing exists without reason. 5 . Humans only become human by participation in these processes. 6. Religion expresses the moral reality of the society. 7. The basis of the historical development in the West is freedom. 8. Men are free only insofar as they have mastered themselves through

law. 9. The fundamental contemporary political need is for authoritative

intermediary bodies. 10. The modern world is morally split and fragmented.

11. Ideas by which Durkheim distanced himseq from Hegel

1. Sociology needs to be a specialized academic discipline. 2 . One of its central focuses must be use of specialized statistical and

ethnographic data. 3. Different social arenas will require specific explanatory principles. 4. Social development follows no single line but displays a variety of

historical individuals. 5 . Social facts must be explained by social facts, not referred to human

subjectivity. 6. Normal integration is not inevitably interrupted by pathological

alienation. 7. Inherited property produces pathological forced division of labor. 8. Democracy replaces monarchy, an obsolescent system. 9. Philosophy as a specialized academic discipline cannot contain the

social sciences. 10. Religion must be studied as an institution, not for any philosophical

truth it may contain.

6 PETER KNAPP

of the integration of these different social elements is the central problem of Durkheimian sociology.

Third, Hegel suggested that during world history, the world spirit or Weltgeist develops through a series of distinct stages, each the spirit of its age, or Zeitgeist. In turn, each spirit of an age is embodied in the national character of a distinct people as a Volkgeist (1952:36; 1953:ll-12). Conceptions of Geist merged with immensely powerful intellectual and political forces during the nineteenth century, including nationalism, traditional religious doctrines, liberal ideas about the development of law and of freedom, and various ro- mantic conceptions of the creation of culture. In connection with such currents, Hegelian ideas helped popularize the idea of a hidden, lawful, determined developmental sequence in the West and gave enormous impetus to the sys- tematic historical analysis of religion, art, custom, kinship, language, ethics, and philosophy. In France as elsewhere, these ideas merged with an out- pouring of new historical, anthropological, legal, and literary information and with Enlightenment, positivist, and retrograde-traditionalist analyses. They formed a basic foundation for Durkheimian theory.

Fourth, the concepts of Zatgait and Volksgeist embodied the idea that all social and cultural institutions form a functional system. Hegel formulated this idea as the rationality of the actual; Durkheim, as functional need.

Fifth, Hegel believed that humans only become human by participation in the system of objective spirit, which he further related to traditional re- ligious doctrines and moral ideas. Moral, intellectual, and religious forces are for Hegel living Spirit. Thus Hegel regarded universal history as a theodicy. The march of reason to freedom is providential. It is the march of God. Ac- cordingly, sixth, Hegels conception of Geist contains a sociological theory of religion. He believed that values, especially religious values, form the core of social structure and the basis of moral life and the state (1971:284,296). Both Durkheims view of the social nature of humanity, homo duplex (Lukes, 1973: 410-434), and his theory of religion (1887; compare Giddens, 1970: 177; 1897a:650-651) are deeply indebted to these analyses. This despite Durk- heims self-report, which places the realization of religions importance about 1895 (1907:613).

Hegels conception of religion is only one section of one portion of his analysis of culture, norms, and social structure. He distinguished three major regions of Geist, nested within each other: subjective, objective, and absolute. He further divided and subdivided each of these. Subjective spirit most nearly refers to mind in the sense of an individuals psychological faculties, ab- stracted from social institutions and historical development. But for Hegel even subjective spirit is a collective entity. It includes language and the social and cultural interactions through which humans develop self-consciousness

HEGELIAN INFLUENCE UPON DURKHEIM 7

as well as both cognitive and practical (or normative) theories. At the other ex- treme, the concept of absolute spirit refers basically to cultural products that transcend the social structure within which they arise. Hegel subdivided absolute spirit into art, religion, and philosophy. He made each the subject of multivolume cycles of lectures that, during the nineteenth century, had a wide impact on literary criticism, theology, history, and philosophy. Studies stem- ming from these-lectures were a major source of Durkheims insight that humans become fully human only through participation in nested, inter- related, historically developing social and cultural structures. Sandwiched be- tween the analyses of subjective and of absolute spirit and central to any direct Hegelian influence on Durkheim is the analysis of objective spirit. Objective spirit is, roughly, the realm of social institutions and obligatory, sanctioned be- havior, especially law. While Hegel and Durkheim sharply disagreed on some basic political questions, they also shared important views stemming from the analysis of spirit.

A seventh Hegelian view crucial for Durkheim is the view that the thrust of western history is the development of freedom in law that is rational and universal (allgemeine: also universalistic, popular, general, and common). Eighth, Hegel viewed the basis of liberty as obedience to law. Humans can only be free insdfar as they have mastered themselves through law. Thus, Durkheim argued, in a passage equally distinctive of Hegel, Nothing is falser than this antagonism too often presented between legal authority and in- dividual liberty. Quite the contrary, liberty (we mean genuine liberty, which it is societys duty to have respected) is the product of regulation (1933:3). These similarities in Hegels and Durkheims overall formulations are grounded upon a host of more specific commonalities in their detailed views on the im- portance of Roman property law, Christianity, and other historical sources of western political beliefs and on the function of punishment, custom, and or- ganizations in maintaining them.

For example, Hegel and Durkheim both viewed the basic problem of modernity as the creation of authoritative intermediary bodies between the individual and the state. Important differences separate Hegels analysis of the corporation (1952: 152- 155) from the quasi-syndicalist proposals closing Durkheims major early works (1933: 1-31, 406-409; 1951: 378-392; 1957: 1-41). Nevertheless, both men sought to modify the medieval corporation to provide normative mediation between the individual and the modern state.

Finally, tenth, it can be argued that the central theme of Hegels philos- ophy as a whole is the breakdown of religious, intellectual, organizational, moral, and political bases of community in modern society. The fundamental concepts of alienation, splitting, and contradiction and the antinomies be- tween subject and object, individual and universal, finite and infinite, truth

8 PETERKNAPP

and certainty, etc., may be related to this central issue (Cullen 1979). How- ever one reads Hegels famous dialectic, most theorists believe its main topic is the splitting of an immediate whole into antagonistic parts and their later reconciliation. For example, the Phenomenology d Spirit portrays some thirty- three scientific, philosophical, artistic, political, moral, or religious configura- tions or gestalts. Each of these is subject to irresolvable internal conflicts, and after about fifteen pages each self-destructs, creating a new configuration. A recurrent theme in Hegels analyses is the breakup of medieval society repre- sented by the Reformation and the French Revolution.

Durkheims main lifetime theoretical concern likewise centered on the breakup of social integration, in egoism and anomie. While he adopted neither the terms nor the constructs of Hegel, he did depend upon critiques of in- dividualism that extended from the far right to the far left of the political spec- trum (Lukes, 1973:206-207, 330-354). Durkheims work on individualism and anomie resembles important aspects of Hegel because of their common concern with the breakdown of normative integration. The fundamental analysis of the shift from mechanical to organic solidarity as well as major aspects of the historical analyses on which it is based are prefigured in Hegels analyses (for example, that of the relation of individuality and universalism within civil society).

Breaks between Hegel and Durkheim

The preceding argument is not intended to substitute a Hegelian Durk- heim for a Comtian one. Rather, it attempts to underscore conceptual parallels important to the development of social theory in the nineteenth century that are also important to the integration of contemporary sociology. One reason the relationships have been overlooked is that it is taken for granted in todays history of social theory that Durkheim was almost exclusively influenced by theorists in the French tradition (Parsons, 1968:307; Lukes, 1973:90-94). The idea that French influence is preeminent in Durkheims thought is central to Parsons argument that there occurred a convergence to voluntarism from independent traditions (1968: 11-12; but compare Durkheim, 1953:xiv and contrast Pope, 1973).

Durkheim refers to Hegel rarely and disparagingly (for example, 1957: 54). Partly this reflected a number of sharp oppositions between the two. In addition to the commonalities between Hegel and Durkheim discussed above, Figure 1 also schematizes ten oppositions between them, briefly discussed below.

First, methodologically, Durkheim had a central and lifelong aim to guarantee sociology as a specialized, empirical, academic discipline (Bendix, 1971). Hence he directed sharp polemics against any speculative system that

HEGELIAN INFLUENCE UPON DURKHEIM 9

threatened that specialization or that was uninformative about concrete, relevant empirical data. Second, from his aim followed Durkheims concern with specificity of ethnographic, sociological, and historical data and related explanatory principles, a concern absent from Hegels works. In one sphere after another Durkheim pioneered the use of systematic empirical data within theoretical sociology. This is true not only of statistical data in Suicide but applies equally to his use of legal and ethnographic data (Alpert, 1939: 123- 129, 190-198). Durkheim insists that such studies be complemented by histor- ical analyses (1969:3 1-36). Third, however, these studies introduced and worked through a series of problems that have no parallel in Hegel. They are the basis for his dismissing as philosophical dilettantism arguments that failed to grapple with relevant data and specific explanatory principles (for example, 1969: 565-568).

Fourth, Durkheims distinctive methodological principles led to his argu- ing for the existence of diverse historical individuals and sequences as opposed to universal history. Yet it connects as much as divides the two theorists to in- terpret several of Durkheims most distinctive methodological principles as consciously opposed to Hegel. For example, fifth, the principle that social facts must explain social facts was probably directed in part against the notion of meaningful interpretation and rational development embedded in literary, social, legal, and religious history and associated with Hegels idea of de- velopment as produced by self-actualizing spirit.

Methodological oppositions between Hegel and Durkheim entailed sub- stantive disagreements. Sixth, while both men analyzed moral, social break- down, they differed in judging it. Paradoxically for the liberal Durkheim, breakdown pathologically interrupts social integration, while Hegels view that history justifies a given society also meant that all that exists deserves to perish (for example, 1952: 16-20). Seventh, politically, Hegel had made prop- erty the foundation of modern freedom. Though not as sharply as Marx, Durkheims analysis of forced division of labor suggested that inheritance of property was inconsistent with the normal integration of modern society (1933:377-384). Eighth, Durkheim was a committed democrat of the Third Republic, while Hegel argued for monarchical principles deeply antagonistic to it (Durkheim, 1957:76-109). Ninth, philosophy, for Hegel, contained legal, aesthetic, religious, historical subsections. Durkheim, despite his social epistemology (1915:21-33), promoted specialization. Tenth and finally, de- spite his modern image, Durkheims analysis of religion excludes the accom- modation between theology and theory of religion present in Hegels view of philosophy as the truth of religion.

Opposition as well as similarities between Hegel and Durkheim may be exaggerated. A caricatured Comtian Durkheim has been opposed to a Hegel

10 PETER KNAPP

caricatured as historicist, speculative, metaphysical, and authoritarian. (This Hegel was correctly exploded by Kaufmann, 1966). But often, even when they share doctrines, Durkheim distanced himself from Hegel. Not only did they disagree on method or substance so that reference to Hegel would have been distasteful, but also any such reference would have been misleading. Within Durkheirns milieu, any reference to Hegel would have raised some of the sharpest of twentieth-century political, religious, ethical, philosophical, and methodological controversies. Hegels place in many of these was de- batable. Durkheim could not have referred to Hegelian ideas without offering to interpret them. But any attempt at interpretation would have been subject to costly misunderstanding, besides diverting Durkheim from the theoretical tasks he had set himself.

Moreover, not only would identification with Hegelian argument be mis- leading and distasteful to Durkheim, it would have been politically disastrous, while disagreement was politic. A major reason for this was simple nationalism (Tiryakian, 1965; Bendix, 1971). In the revanchist atmosphere of France be- tween the Franco-Prussian War and World War I , despite his insistence that sociology was a French science, Durkheims opponents charged him with importing German ideas (DePloige, 1938). Overt association with Hegel could not promote Durkheims effort to establish sociology as an academic discipline. Rather, it would have exposed Durkheim to withering nationalistic intellectual attacks.

Finally, reference to Hegel at the turn of the century was relatively super- fluous. Within his milieu, Durkheim could justifiably assume (as his con- temporary popularizers cannot) that his audience was deeply aware, if often distrustful, of Hegelian ideas. As Renouvier correctly states, Hegel was, without question, the greatest philosophical figure of the century (Charlton, 1959: 225).

In any case, Durkheim did explicitly relate his work to figures deeply in- fluenced by Hegel. Specifically, he related his own work to the neo-Kantian academic philosophers such as Boutroux and Renouvier; to figures like Robert- son Smith, Renan, Cousin, and Taine engaged in wider historical debates on religion; to the socialists; to folk-psychologists associated with Wundt; and to German historicist thinkers.

Conclusion

In American sociology at the present time Durkheims stock is so high and Hegels is so low that many readers will perceive any serious comparison of them as an attack on Durkheim. Several commentators have stressed the linkage between Durkheim and figures such as Schaffle, Wundt, or Tonnies (DePloige, 1938; Gisbert, 1959), but they have done so in order to defend

HEGELIAN INFLUENCE UPON DURKHEIM 11

methodological individualism and criticize Durkheims social realism as a metaphysical construct. For most sociologists, it is scandalous to argue that the most empirical, scientific, lucid, and liberal of French sociologists shared a large body of doctrine with the most obscure, metaphysical, antiscientific, reactionary of German philosophers. The comparison of Hegel and Durkheim will strike some readers as having all the interest and utility of a translation of Shakespeare into Middle English.

Oppositions between the positivist-realist and the idealist-interpretive traditions are exaggerated. Hegels contemporaries often regarded him as an empiricist or uncritical positivist (Hegel, 1978:vol. 1, pp. ix-x). A number of modern commentators have portrayed his social thought as liberal to radical (Kaufmann, 1966; Cullen, 1979; LukBcs, 1978). Hegels treatment of the development of knowledge and law raised a number of issues that are still of importance. Many of his methodological views raise issues of functionalism or interpretation that are also important. However, unlike the figures regarded as founders of sociology, Hegels insights about social structure and process were entangled in doctrine such as Protestant theology, speculative meta- physics, and monarchist politics. But that entanglement was key to the pop- ularization of the ideas (contrast the number of nineteenth-century profes- sionals concerned with religion or law or government to those concerned with sociology) and it is less dangerous today than it was. Social theory went through a major process of development through the nineteenth century. In Durk- heims hands it changed still further. The comparison between Durkheim and Hegel illuminates relationships important to contemporary sociology. Marx, Durkheim, and Weber broke with different elements of Hegelian theory. They directed explicit critiques at Hegel or Hegelians even when they did not address each other. Therefore, Hegel provides a natural arena in which they can be confronted with each other.

Merton developed Whiteheads dictum that everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it (Merton, 1967:9-26). The danger of mistaking an adumbration for a clear insight, an insight for a conceptual scheme for a developed theory, and a theory for an empirical dis- cipline is especially acute in the case of Hegel. Both the peculiar opaqueness of his style and the fact that Hegel was an encyclopedic thinker whose thought in- corporated major chunks of doctrine from virtually every previous philosopher make it difficult to specify precisely how much (or how little) is implied in a given statement. It is clear that the elements of Rousseau that Hegel adopted via Kant and his use of Montesquieu account for some of the resemblances be- tween Hegel and Durkheim. It is the thesis of this essay that the commonalities between Hegel and Durkheim go beyond few insights adopted from predeces- sors. While the changes in problematic between Hegel and Durkheim are

12 PETER KNAPP

important, parallels include a large number of the foundational and most distinctive ideas of each theorist. In the case of Hegel, not only were these ideas elaborated systematically but they were also developed in considerable empirical detail in a series of multivolume works. During the nineteenth century these works fed massive streams of scholarship with which Durkheim was especially and centrally concerned at the end of the century.

The connection between Durkheim and Hegel spans an abyss that sepa- rates diverse traditions in the social sciences. In the generation prior to Durk- heim, in addition to the figures mentioned above, such figures as Kierke- gaard, T. 13. Green, W. R. Smith, Burckhardt, or Bosanquet may be most easily related to Durkheim in light of their relation to Hegel. In Durkheims own generation, the interpretive theories of such figures as Freud, Dewey, Saussure, Husserl, Mead, and Croce may be most easily related to Durkheim in light of his breaks and his commonalities with Hegel. In the following gen- eration, such figures as Lukacs, Heidegger, Collingswood, Sartre, Schutz, L6vi-Strauss, Gadamer, and Habermas continue traditions deeply influenced by Hegel, although some in those traditions will find the idea of a Hegel- Durkheim connection quite as offensive as will many theorists within empiri- cal mainstream sociology.

A common historical origin does not reduce real differences in methods, aim, conceptual scheme, or theory. However, recognition of common prob- lems does break down a sterile, splendid isolation of the different traditions. The history of theory cannot solve theoretical and empirical disputes. But it is indispensable in order to give those disputes form and depth that they would otherwise lack.

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