Religious System Is the Most Primitive and Simple - Essay Example

The nature of pre-modern social life was essentially religious and it did represent the society’s collective consciousness. Thus, to analyze this it is quite proper to have a broad understanding of recent religions, which is only possible if we go back into the past and follow how it progressed in history. Religions showed the same conformity to some essential elements such as their outside and visible characteristics which makes them comparable to one another. Although in the course of history, religious life appeared to be complicated and diversified which Durkheim referred to as difficult to distinguish such as secondary from principal, essential from accessory, popular superstitions from purest dogmas, and the beliefs from rites and even from priests to monks and laymen.

With this build-up, it is not easy to situate the common foundation of religious life. Lower societies are then compared to more advanced societies wherein the former being simple and with slighter development of individuality makes it easier to identify its religious foundations as compared to the latter which everything is common to all. It is thought that the more advanced a society is, the more complicated it is to trace the early beginnings of religious life.

The primary religions then allow us to understand these elementary forms since the facts are simpler, not influenced, and as Durkheim sees it as nearer and more closely related to the motives which have determined these acts (Durkheim, 7).  Religious origin for a long time has been known to be the first system of representations. Durkheim believed that to understand these representations there must be the participation as to time, space, and identity of individual thoughts. However, Durkheim stated that we cannot conceive time but we can only realize that portions of our past become present again, though clearly distinguished as present. Durkheim further emphasized that the time is not merely an individual’s time but is a time in general that is thought of by everybody in a single civilization.
Thus, this shows a collective experience. The spatial representation on the other hand consists of primary coordination of the data of sensuous experience which Durkheim mentioned that the dispositions should be placed differently; some on the left or right, above or below, north and south. The principle of identity is described as a dominant scientific thought, which Durkheim mentioned as human intelligence that remains as a foundation. This human intelligence is not mainly in an individual’s mind integrally but is considered chiefly social. These categories themselves are social both in form and content since religion is primarily a social affair.

It is further explained that religion can only be understood as a product of the social condition of man from the collective mind of society which leads to an understanding of the origin of the necessity of the categories. It is said that an idea is necessary when it imposes itself upon the mind by some sort of virtue of its own, without being accompanied by any proof (Durkheim, 17). It can be then concluded that Durkheim viewed religion as a catalyst in the development of modern societies and as the reason that morally binds individuals to society.
His sociology of knowledge postulates that the categories of man's thought--his ways of conceiving space and time, for example--can be traced to his mode of social life, Durkheim was concerned with functional interrelations between systems of beliefs and thought and the underlying social structure (Caser, 139).