A Critique of Emile Durkheim’s Sociology of Suicide

Abstract

The position of suicide in the world has hitherto remained a controversial one not only in terms of its moral permissibility but also in the process of explicating its nature, causes and its effect in the society. On the one hand, the religious wing and other philosophers like Kant have reflected on the subject with outright condemnation and considered it a sin, a crime or both, the Enlightenment thinkers on the other hand, especially those who wrote on the subject like Rousseau among others, agreed that the religious condemnation of suicide was not only preposterous but also entirely lacking in charity. Emile Durkheim was the first to offer a systematic scientific study on suicide which pieced through the moral indignation and philosophical defenses surrounding it. Like other French scholars, he established his argument by elimination that is, rejecting the negative phase of his argument: excluding psychopathic states, race, heredity, and climatic factors from the line of causation on the basis of statistical and other data, such that only social factors remain. Having described the nature and influence of social integration in family, religion, and political domains, Durkheim concluded from his empirical analyses that suicide is a new fact sui generis, with its own unity, individuality and consequently its own nature-a nature, furthermore, dominantly social. This research work offers a critique of Durkheim’s theory on suicide and argues that for a holistic explication of the nature and causes of suicide, an all-inclusive approach such as philosophical, psychological and sociological approach, is needed.