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Historicizing the category ! The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/2050303218800369
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and Emile Durkheim

Mitsutoshi Horii
Chaucer College Canterbury, UK

Abstract
The generic notion of “religion” and its conceptual demarcation from “the secular” have
been critically examined by a number of scholars from the “critical religion” perspective.
The interrogation of the term “religion,” and other related terms, questions modern formations
of knowledge and power in general. This paper constitutes part of the project which examines
norms and imperatives which govern sociological discourse on religion. Max Weber and Emile
Durkheim are particularly significant figures in sociology of religion. The aim of this paper is to
historicize the category “religion” (and its opposition “the secular”) employed by Weber and
Durkheim, in the specific social context of Germany and France in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. It hopes to contribute to a greater understanding of the ideological foundation of
sociological theories of religion.

Keywords
Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, critical religion, social theory

This article is a preliminary but critical examination of the idea of “religion” in sociological
theories, and of the classificatory practice that employs the term “religion” (as opposed to
“the secular”) in sociological discourse. In other words, it applies the “critical religion”
approach to highlight the ideological function of the religion–secular distinction. In this

Corresponding author:
Mitsutoshi Horii, Chaucer College Canterbury, University Road, Canterbury CT2 7LJ, UK.
Email: horii@mailg.shumeiu.ac.jp
2 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

light, the focus of this article is on the notion of “religion” employed by Max Weber and
Emile Durkheim. It pays critical attention to the norms and imperatives which govern their
discourses on “religion” (whatever they mean by this term). For this purpose, the discussion
which follows historicizes these theorists’ specific classificatory practices, which employ
the category “religion” within the European social context in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. The idea of “religion” in Weber’s and Durkheim’s works must be understood
in relation to the norms and imperatives which govern the use of the term. It needs to
be understood within their specific social milieus, and Weber’s and Durkheim’s specific
relations to the ideologies of the states, namely the German Empire and the French
Third Republic.

“Critical Religion,” empire, and “religion” in European social theories

Categories are intimately related to how we think. The word “religion” is not an exception
of this rule. When we call something “religious,” we categorize it as “religion,” as opposed
to “secularity.” If we push this way of thinking further, we can argue that like any other
social categories, the utilization of the terms “religious,” and its binary opposite, “secular,”
serve the specific interests of groups and individuals, often in relation to constitutional and
political rights. This way of approaching to the term “religion” and other related category is
collectively termed as “critical religion.”
In recent decades, “critical religion” approach has been pushed forward by a number of
scholars. Timothy Fitzgerald (2000, 2007a, 2011) and Russell McCutcheon (1997; Arnal and
McCutcheon, 2013), however, are probably the most well-known pioneers in this field.
Talal Asad’s (1993, 2003) works have also been influential in this area as the references to
his writings can be found frequently in “critical religion” literature. “Critical religion” often
takes the combination of postcolonial and poststructuralist perspectives to analyze the ideo-
logical function of the religious–secular distinction. Other scholars such as Cavanaugh
(2009) and Nongbri (2013) stress the fact that the category “religion,” as opposed to
“secular,” has been historically constructed within specific cultural circumstances of western
modernity. Many works emphasize the category’s western imperial legacy so as to critique
the colonial norms tacitly embedded in the cross-cultural applications of the term as an
analytical category (Fitzgerald, 2007b). The works of Chidester (1996) and Josephson
(2012), for example, highlight that whereas “religion” is a western folk category whose
equivalent cannot be found in many parts of the world, the category was historically
imposed upon these places by western colonial powers. In a much more specific context,
Johansen (2011) and Jeldtoft and Johansen (2012), for example, empirically study the con-
struction of the religious–secular binary in academic practices at religion departments in
Danish universities. These studies suggest that “religion” is a socially constructed category
and its construction should be the subject of examination.
This echoes the following claim made by another “critical religion” scholar, Naomi
Goldenberg. According to her, the goal of “critical religion” is “to build an argument for
curtailing the use of the category of ‘religion’” (Goldenberg, 2013: 40). It is important to
stress that the category “religion” is “an empty signifier in the sense that it is historically,
socially and culturally constructed and negotiated in various situations” (Taira, 2013: 26).
“Emptiness” is the very nature of any social category, so that it “can be activated with
definitions, meanings, and communicational practices” (Struckrad, 2013: 17). Highlighting
the “emptiness” of a category is important because it is the process of filling this emptiness
Horii 3

with meaning that produces “effects on some human lives and societies” (Beckford, 2003:
24). Thus, the category of “religion” can be meaningfully studied by examining “the pro-
cesses of communicational generation, legitimatization, and negotiation of meaning system”
(Struckrad, 2013: 18), which utilize the religious–secular binary in a specific historical and
cultural context.
This article applies “critical religion” perspective to the examination of the functions of
the category “religion” in the classical European social theories of Max Weber and Emile
Durkheim. These theorists have been enshrined as the Founding Fathers of sociology.
Their conceptualization of “religion” has become the foundation of sociological discourse
on religion. Importantly, both Weber and Durkheim claim a nonreligious positionality,
from which they analyzed “religion.” Although they did not employ the term “secular” to
describe their ostensible nonreligiousness,1 their self-proclaimed detachment from “religion”
has been categorized as “secular” by sociologists, which provides sociologists with the
source of their “secular” self-identity.
In other words, this article explores the category of “religion” in the works of Max Weber
and Emile Durkheim in the German and French contexts of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. It examines the ways in which the religious–secular distinction, which is assumed
by Weber and Durkheim, constitutes the fundamental categories which sustains the imperial
epistemologies. More specifically, the construction of the religious–secular distinction in
Weber’s and Durkheim’s works is entangled with the power of the state, namely the
German Empire and the French Third Republic. Both Weber’s and Durkheim’s sociologies,
on the one hand, and European empires, on the other hand, shared the same semantics on
“religion,” and on “secular” self-identities. “Religion” was conceptualized as an object to be
analyzed by “secular” social science and governed by the “secular” state.
The implicit imperialism in classical social theories has been highlighted by many sociol-
ogists, who have been influenced by postcolonial theories. For example, Raewyn Connell
(2007: 9) claims that the places where these social theories were created were “the urban and
cultural centres of the major imperial powers at the high tide of modern imperialism.”
Classical social theories, in other words, “emerged within the wider culture of imperialism
as it was manifest in the metropoles” and they were “embedded within the imperial epis-
teme” (Go, 2016: 78).
Postcolonial self-critiques within sociology, for example, unveil the discipline’s colonial
heritage in the imperial epistemology embedded in classical social theories, upon which the
discipline has been founded. In my view, however, these critiques appear to be unaware of
the function of the category of “religion” for naturalizing the tacit imperialism of social
theories. Julian Go (83) notes: “Social theory in particular is inextricably tied to modernity:
it emerges from modernist thought, which separates the ‘religious’ from the ‘social’ and
other spheres of life.” Nonetheless, he does not pursue this line of inquiry in his postcolonial
critique of social theory.
In contrast, a “critical religion” perspective stresses that the religious–secular distinction
is a modern classificatory practice, which historically represents western cultural norms from
the colonial era onwards. It claims that historically, it was this very binary that authorized
the western colonial cultural norms. As we extend this line of argument to the present day, a
“critical religion” perspective asserts that the religious–secular distinction naturalizes the
value orientations of modern capitalism and nation-states. Given this, “religion” and
“secularity” are conceptualized as the categories of governance (Stack, Goldenberg, and
Fitzgerald, 2015). Thus, a “critical religion” approach sheds the light on the historical fact
4 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

that the academic discipline of sociology, ideologically founded upon social theory, emerged
from modernist thought which separates the “religious” from the “secular.” Critical reflec-
tions on the categories of religion and secularity, which have been pushed forward by
“critical religion,” therefore, urge sociologists to challenge their own imperial ideological
heritage deeply embedded in their own scholarly epistemology.
Historically speaking, social theories of Weber and Durkheim were “formed within the
culture of imperialism, and embodied in an intellectual response to the colonised world”
(Connell, 2007: 9). They are not necessarily directly complicit with imperialism. The issue
I would like to highlight here is subtler. I argue that, borrowing Julian Go’s (2016: 78)
words, the modality of thinking in their social theories is “contaminated” by the imperial
epistemology. In my view, the category “religion” and its imagined distinction from
“nonreligion” constitute the fundamental classification scheme which sustains subtle impe-
rialism, by authorizing and naturalizing the ostensibly “nonreligious” narratives of social
theories, as if they are rooted in “natural reason,” in contrast to the apparent irrational
barbarity of “religion.”
Considering the fact that Weber and Durkheim are generally regarded as founding
fathers of sociology, pointing out the implicit imperialism embedded in their social theories
demands sociologists’ critical reflections upon the ideological foundation of their discipline.
This echoes the postcolonial critiques within the discipline of sociology. However, in my
view, what has been ignored in these critiques is the ideological function of the category
“religion” in legitimating the subtle imperialism contaminating sociological narratives.

Weber’s “religion” and the German Empire

With regard to Weber’s notion of religion, he famously refuses to define the term in his
Sociology of Religion:

To define “religion”, to say what it is, is not possible at the start of a presentation such as this.
Definition can be attempted, if at all, only at the end of the study. The essence of religion is not
even our concern, as we make it our own task to study the conditions and effects of a particular
type of social behaviour. (Weber, [1922] 1993: 1)

In respect of this refusal to define religion, Arnal and McCutcheon (2013: 17) argue:
“The assumption here seems to be that what counts as the ‘stuff’ of religion is so obvious
and self-evident that it can be identified and studied without even knowing, in Weber’s
words, ‘what it is.’”
By his twenties, Weber seems to understand “religion” as something in our “mind and
spirit,” as well as one of the chief foundations of a civilization. In his letter written to his
brother Alfred in March 1884 (quoted in Ghosh, 2014: 92), when Weber was not quite
twenty years old, he called “the doctrines of Christianity” as “this religion” which was to
“confront us in mind and spirit.” He also regarded “the Christian religion” as the founda-
tion of “everything that we nowadays assemble under the name of ‘our Kultur’.” In other
words, for the young Weber, “the Christian religion” is “one of the chief foundations
underlying everything great that has been created in this [2,000-year] epoch.” These two
characterizations of “religion” continue throughout his later writings.
In his famous letter written to Ferdinand T€onnies in 1909 (quoted in Carroll, 2007: 57),
Weber proclaimed that he was “unmusical religiously,” while adding that he was
Horii 5

“neither antireligious nor irreligious.” For him, “religion” or being “religious” is a

“characteristic” in one’s self. It is also something to do with one’s “need or ability to
erect” what he called “some spiritual ‘edifice’.” In another letter to T€ onnies written less
than two weeks later (quoted in Josephson-Storm, 2017: 288), Weber’s “religion” appears to
be closely associated with “mysticism,” which was popular in his life time and in which he
was also involved (269–301). “Religion” in this sense was understood as a kind of psycho-
logical state experienced by individuals.
At the same time, Weber utilizes the concept of “religion” to denote the foundation of
different civilizations. Throughout his writings, it is apparent that Weber conceptualized
“religion” as something almost universally found in all cultures throughout history.
He identifies the multiplicity of “religions” in the world, and he employs the concept of
“world religions” (Weltreligionen). Weber states in his “The Social Psychology of World
Religions,” for example: “By “world religions,” we understand the five religions or reli-
giously determined systems of life-regulation . . .” (Weber, [1915] 1997: 267). Later in his life,
he undertook extensive studies of these “world religions” [Weltreligionen], which according
to him includes “Confucianism” [Konfuzianismus], “Hinduism” [Hinduismus], “Buddhism”
[Buddhismus], “Islamism” [Islam], “Judaism” [Judentum], “Christianity” [Christentum]
(268–269). One could add “Taoism” [Taoismus] to the list.
As Martin Albrow (1990: 13) claims: “it is important to stress an obvious but all too
frequently ignored fact: Weber wrote within a Christian tradition.” Weber’s notion of reli-
gion is generated from “the Christian belief in two worlds, the material and terrestrial, on
the one hand, and the spiritual and heavenly, on the other” (37). More specifically, Weber’s
category of religion is associated with mind or spirit (Geist), which is conceptualized as the
binary opposite of the world (Welt). The Geist-Welt distinction is part of the Christian frame
of experience in Weber’s time, which takes on “connotations of material and ideal, sinful
and perfect, everyday and extraordinary” (78). On one level, Weber conceptualized
“religion” as Geist, located in the inner realm of individuals. On another level, this notion
of “religion” as Geist is understood as the foundation of Welt, in terms of civilizations,
whose foundations are conceptualized as “world religions.”
In Weber’s study on the Protestant Ethic, “religion” is conceptualized as Geist, which is
associated with an individual’s mind and spirit. Weber seems to have been seeking a specific
form of Geist, which can drive German imperial Weltpolitik (“world politics”). Weber
regarded Weltpolitik as “the strategy of resolving domestic political tensions through expan-
sionary foreign policy” (Anter, 2014: 124). Weber admired England as the model of
Weltpolitik and he regarded Puritanism as the ideal form of Geist for Weltpolitik.
Weber’s support of Weltpolitik reflects the cultural norms of his own time in Germany,
which had been characterized by “the superheated nationalist atmosphere” (Roth, 1993a: 2).
In his famous inaugural lecture in Freiburg in 1895, Weber ([1895] 1980) “defines Weltpolitik
as a future task of the German Reich.” Weber conceives that “imperial Weltpolitik serves as
a means of social and political integration and that it can enhance the purchasing power and
living standard of the working class” (Anter, 2014: 124). In Weber’s own words:

Our successors will not hold us responsible before history for the kind of economic organization
we hand over to them, but rather for the amount of elbow-room we conquer for them in the
world and leave behind us. Processes of economic development are in the final analysis also
power struggles, and the ultimate and decisive interests at whose service economic policy must
6 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

place itself are the interests of national power, where these interests are in question. (Weber,
[1895] 1980: 39)

This kind of view was not exceptional in Weber’s lifetime, and Weber’s explicit support of
German imperialism is simply a typical representative of his late 19th century contemporaries.
Behind Weber’s advocacy of German Weltpolitik, there was, according to Roth (1993b:
84), “profound admiration for England.” In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, Weber states: “Puritanism enabled its adherents to create free institutions and
still become a world power” (Weber, [1930] 1992: 261). In this context, “he modelled his
notion of ethical personality and innerworldly asceticism to a considerable extent after an
idealized image of English history, especially of Puritanism” (Roth, 1993b: 83). Weber
regarded Puritanism as an ideal type of “religion” (in the sense of Geist) for successful
Weltpolitik.
He characterized the individual nurtured within Puritan traditions as “an ‘inner-directed’
type of personality, sober, self-assertive, and actively engaged in worldly affairs” (Seidman,
1983: 221). In The Protestant Ethic, Weber states: “In the Puritan concept of the calling the
emphasis is always placed on this methodical character of worldly asceticism, not, as with
Luther, on the acceptance of the lot which God has irretrievably assigned to man” (Weber,
[1930] 1992: 162).
Then he continues:

The emphasis on ascetic importance of a fixed calling provided an ethical justification of the
modern specialized division of labour. In a similar way the providential interpretation of profit-
making justified the activities of the business man. The superior indulgence of the seigneur and the
parvenu ostentation of the nouveau riche are equally detestable to asceticism. But, on the other
hand, it has the highest ethical appreciation of the sober, middle-class, self-made man. (163)

These are contrasted by Weber with Germany’s Lutheran heritage, which, Weber believed,
“had produced a mentality of authoritarian subordination” (Roth, 1993a: 7). In a proceed-
ing part of The Protestant Ethic, Weber argues:

Thus for Luther the concept of the calling remained traditionalistic. His calling is something
which man has to accept as a divine ordinance, to which he must adapt himself. . . . Thus, for the
time being, the only ethical result was negative; worldly duties were no longer subordinated to
ascetic ones; obedience to authority and the acceptance of things as they were, were preached.
(Weber, [1930] 1992: 85–86)

The individual rooted in Lutheran traditions was characterized by Weber as “an ‘other-
directed’ type of personality who responds to the environment in an emotional, disconnected
manner . . . infused with an attitude of dependency and resignation” (Seidman, 1983: 221).
The contrast between these two types of personality was made by Weber to critique the
German ideology of this time. As Roth (1993a: 2) describes it, Max Weber was “a commit-
ted German nationalist who cared passionately about his country’s standing as a world
power.” It was from this nationalist passion that Weber “exaggerated the world-historical
role of Calvinism and Protestantism to dramatize his cultural and political critique of impe-
rial Germany” (3). Seidman (1983: 222) explains: “The critique of the German ideology was,
therefore, the other side of the critique of the German Lutheran religious tradition.” That is,
Horii 7

according to Seidman (221), “Weber juxtaposed the ‘Lutheran personality’ type and the
Puritan individual precisely in order to stimulate the critical self-reflection of the German
bourgeoisie by confronting them with a model of an independent bourgeois individual.”
In addition, tacit imperialism can also be found in Weber’s utilization of the term “world
religions.” Although he claims that he uses the term “in a completely value-neutral sense”
(Weber, [1915] 1997: 267), it is loaded with specific assumptions about the world, widely
shared with Weber’s contemporaries. Tomoko Masuzawa (2005), for example, traces the
historical emergence of the concept “world religions” and argues that the construction of the
category involved German intellectuals in the mid-19th century. She examines the concep-
tual shift of the category “religions” from the “national” to the “universal.” This involves
the development of comparative theology, the discovery of Buddhism as an Aryan religion,
and the rise of philology and linguistic classification (notably the antiquity of Sanskrit as the
source of Indo-Aryan languages and race), as well as the classification of Islam as a non-
Aryan religion. All these led to the construction of the category “world religions.”
Masuzawa concludes that this category provided Europeans with a discursive means
which enabled them to maintain cultural hegemony, while acknowledging the diversity
and plurality of human cultures.
In the same line of argument, there are some strong postcolonial critiques of Weber’s
conceptualization of religion. For example, Weber’s concept of “world religions” is implic-
itly influenced by the philosophy of Hegel. Hegel’s writing on religion “produces a specific
world-picture that classifies religions and places them inside a comparative grid in a way that
defends Europe against the threat of a shared origin with India, which had been demon-
strated linguistically by Schlegel and others” (Steinmetz, 2006: 10). According to
Zimmerman (2006: 54): “Weber’s later work on the religions of Europe, China, and India
elaborated a culturally differentiated world that did not place Europe in the position of
conqueror but rather in a position of adjacent superiority.” In other words, “His [Weber’s]
comparative study of the economic ethics of Protestantism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and
Islam thus aimed to explain why whole regions did not achieve the rational, capitalist
economics of Protestant civilizations” (Zimmerman, 2013: 180). In this way, Weber high-
lights the uniqueness of the Occidental civilization. Historically, according to Weber, it is
only in the Occident that the modern capitalism emerged. This is due to the specific form of
inner-worldly asceticism that characterizes Protestantism, which is absent in all other
“world religions.”
It is also indicated that “religion” has died out in the modern capitalist Occident, while
“religion” is still active in other part of the world. Ostensibly, the postreligious status of the
modern capitalist Occident is described in a rather tragic tone toward the end of Weber’s
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. However, this apparent tragedy of the
Occidental civilization does not seem to downgrade the position of the Occident within the
civilizational hierarchy of the world. It seems that the tragic state of the Occident is con-
ceptualized as a consequence of the highest level of civilizational progress.

Durkheim’s “religion” and the Third Republic

Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life provides the famous definition of
“religion”: “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things
. . .” (Durkheim, [1912] 1995: 44).
8 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

By the time Durkheim elaborated on his definition of the term “religion,” the concept
“religion” became highly abstract. The notion of religion was extended to connote an innate
human disposition, and the term “sacred” started to be employed in order to describe the
“essence” of religion (Fujihara, 2005). Durkheim’s notion of “sacred” is paired with its
opposite, “profane,” when his category of religion is often utilized as opposed to the idea
of laı¨que. Thus, the sacred-profane dichotomy reflects the religion–laı¨que dichotomy.
Historically speaking, the French term sacred, “sacre´” was “introduced in daily vernac-
ular by the Revolution” (Despland, 1991: 43). According to Despland (44): “We find that
sacré became prevalent in the 19th century as learned language necessitated by secularisa-
tion. It all happens as if this arose from a post-revolutionary need to distinguish what is civil
and what is religious.”
Similarly, Durkheim’s academic interest in “religion,” and the meaning of the term, need
to be understood in the light of the “broader context of the Third Republic and its attach-
ment to the French Revolution” (Tiryakian, 2009: 106). Durkheim viewed the French
Revolution as a great promise lacking completion. Seidman (1983: 178) claims: “The prac-
tical intention of Durkheim’s sociology is clear: to legitimate the ‘Principles of 1789’ as the
moral basis of the Third French Republic.”
Importantly, Durkheim regarded the Principles of 1789 as a “religion.”

They [the Principles of 1789] are believed in not as theorems but as articles of faith. They were
created neither by science nor for science; rather, they result from the very practice of life. In a
word, they have been a religion which has had its martyrs and apostles, which has profoundly
moved the masses, and which, after all, has given birth to great things. (Durkheim, [1890] 1973: 35)

Durkheim’s characterization of “the Principles of 1789” as a “religion” should be considered

as one major factor if we are to make sense as to why Durkheim devoted so much time and
effort to the careful study of specific aspects of human lives which he classifies as “religion.”
By studying the phenomena, which were generally categorized as “religion” in his own time
in France, Durkheim aimed to assist in completing the Principles of 1789.
As in the case of Max Weber, “the European colonial project was the taken-for-granted
geopolitical context from which the Durkheimians derived systematic gains in the form of
institutional resources and empirical material for the formulation of their conceptual appa-
ratus” (Kurosawa, 2013: 190). At the same time, Durkheim’s study of religion, which cul-
minated in The Elementary Forms, posited challenges to “many of its intellectual premises,
which were themselves grounded in Europe’s self-understanding as a civilizational zenith
(and the consequent inferiority of ‘primitive’ societies) as well as the normalized ethnocen-
trism of the Euro-American human sciences” (199). Nonetheless, Durkheim was a trusted
civil servant of the republican regime. The culmination of Durkheim’s life project was to
provide the Third Republic with the moral foundation, which could be regarded as in
accordance with the nature of things. Durkheim’s semantics of “religion” need to be located
and understood in this milieu.
The establishment of the moral foundation which would give legitimacy to the Third
Republic was an exceedingly important subject in Durkheim’s life time. According to
Tiryakian (2009: 20–21):

An important problem for the Third Republic was that of getting legitimation. If the republic
and the social order behind its policy were to become really accepted by Frenchmen, there was
Horii 9

need for the state to have a moral authority for, as much as over, its citizens. Everyone saw that
the Catholic church had provided the moral authority behind the monarchy, and because of this
past association, the church (particularly the higher clergy) could not be entrusted with assisting
the republic in its post-1870 nation-building endeavors. Conversely, the republic had as major
proponents anticlerical Catholic liberals, Protestants, Jews, and Freemasons. The net result was
that republican France was eagerly concerned with philosophy, with morality, and with moral
education – not from intellectual disinterestedness but from practical considerations for finding
a substitute for traditional Christian teaching, so as to legitimate itself and win the broader
support of new generations of schoolchildren, wrestling them away from the moral authority of
the Catholic church. . . . Philosophy, the rational inquiry for cosmic and social order, was thus
for the Third Republic the chosen alternative to either lawlessness or traditional dogmatism.

The new moral foundation of the Third Republic that was envisaged by Durkheim and his
contemporaries was conceptualized as “laı¨que morality.” In the French context, the term
laı¨que renders the detachment from the institutions of Catholicism, Protestantism, and
Judaism. In Durkheim’s time, the narrative of laı¨cisation in France was driven by anticler-
icalism. This was especially the case in education. The laı¨cisation discourse in France
“is a response to the very real hold of Catholicism on society, a hold probably at its peak
in the area of education especially” (La Grand, 2013: 74). To be laı¨que is to be neutral
toward all “religions,” which means to be “independent of all the clergy, detached from all
theological concepts” (64). In Durkheim’s own time, this implies the disassociation from
Christian and Jewish teachings and institutions. It also carried a stronger implication of the
separation specifically from the Catholic Church.
At the same time, Durkheim imagined the notion of laı¨que as the replacement of
“religion.” This is particularly apparent in his discussion on “laı¨que morality.” In the intro-
duction to his Moral Education, Durkheim ([1925] 1994c: 191) discusses “a purely secular
[laı¨que] moral education” in state-supported schools in France in his own time. The notion
of “a purely secular [laı¨que] moral education,” according to Durkheim, means “an education
that is not derived from revealed religion, but that rest exclusively on ideas, sentiments, and
practices accountable to reason only — in short, a purely rationalistic education” (192).
Here, Durkheim conceptualized “religion” as opposed to “reason” and “rationality.”
Conversely, the idea of laı¨que was, therefore, associated by Durkheim with “reason” and
“rationality.”
Thus, Durkheim’s idea of “laı¨que morality” can be rephrased as “rational morality.”
This is ostensibly “nonreligious” morality. What kind of morality is it? Durkheim does
not give us a simple answer to this question. When he discusses “laı¨que morality,” rather
than denouncing “religion,” Durkheim posits morality’s intimate relationship with
“religion.” He claims the importance of studying religion as a way of understanding the
essence of morality. According to Durkheim, “religion” and “morality” “have been too
inextricably bound together in history . . . Certain moral ideas became united with certain
religious ideas to such an extent as to become indistinct from them”. Then Durkheim
proclaims: “In a word, we must discover the rational substitutes for those religious notions
that for a long time have served as the vehicle for the most essential moral ideas” (196). He
explains that when the existing morality is “rationalized” (or “secularized”) by simply with-
drawing oneself from everything that seems religious, one could be left without all elements
that are properly moral. Given this, Durkheim claims the importance of the engagement
with “religion” is to separate “morality” from “religion.” To “secularize” [laı¨ciser] morality,
10 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

Durkheim argues, it is essential to study religion in order to establish a deeper understand-

ing of moral ideas. Thus, “laı¨que morality” can be constructed through a deep engagement
with religion. Durkheim declares: “We must discover . . . moral forces hidden in it [religion]”
([1925] 1994c: 200).
When Durkheim claims the importance of understanding religion, he defines his own
positionality as laı¨que. In the name of laı¨que, he authorizes the objectivity of his vantage
point. From this ostensibly neutral viewpoint, Durkheim studies “religion” as a “social
fact.” He believes that by understanding a “social fact,” a higher level of morality can be
achieved. He bases “laı¨que morality” on the development of sociology. Durkheim seems to
believe that an ostensibly laı¨que understanding of a “social fact,” namely sociology, can
provide a new ethic for the Third Republic, based on reason rather than on revelation.
He assumes that this “laı¨que morality” would replace the moral criteria of the 19th century,
namely “religion.”
Here laı¨que acquires a “sacred” quality and become indistinguishable from “religion.”
Thus, the boundary between “religion” and laı¨que is not clear. Although religion and laı¨que
are conceptualized as opposed to each other, these are not completely fixed to the objects but
rather are interchangeable. What is apparently laı¨que can be perceived as “religious” when it
acquires a “sacred” quality within a specific context. When Durkheim observes the postrevo-
lution French state, for example, he argues that its ostensibly laı¨que republican ideology
cannot be analytically distinguished from “religion,” since it develops “sacred” characteristics.
In this context, Durkheim recognizes beliefs intermediate between religion and laı¨que:

these are general beliefs of all kinds which appear to be relevant to laı¨ques objects, things like the
flag, one’s country, some form of political organization, some hero, or some historical event or
other, etc. . . . they are to some extent indistinguishable from religious belief proper. (Durkheim,
[1899] 1994a: 91, translation modified)

Durkheim also states:

At that particular time, under the influence of general enthusiasm, things that were purely
laı¨ques in nature were transformed into sacred things by public opinion, for example, the
Motherland, Liberty, Reason. A religion was established which had its dogmas, its symbols,
its alters, and its holy days. It was to these spontaneous aspirations that the cult of Reason and
the Supreme Being attempted to give some form of official recognition. (Durkheim, [1912]
1994b: 132, translation modified)

At the same time, Durkheim also imagined “a decline of religion” in modern society. For
example, he theorizes the epic transformation of society, from the one characterized with
mechanical solidarity through similarity, to the other characterized with organic solidarity
based upon the division of labor and represented by civil law. According to Stock-Morton
(1988: 127): “organic solidarity promoted the growth of individualism and the decline of
religion, which had been the expression of the collective consciousness of the past.” In this
schema of social evolution, the French society of the Third Republic was conceptualized as
essentially laı¨que, as distinguished from a “religious” society in the past and in its colonies.
In addition, by defining “religion,” Durkheim’s discourse on religion indirectly criticizes
what was widely regarded as “religion(s)” in France in his own time. To claim that religion is
the unifying force of society constructs the criticism that what were regarded as religions in
Horii 11

late 19th and early 20th century France (i.e. Christian and Jewish theologies and institu-
tions) were not functioning as “religion” at best, or, at worst, not functioning as “religion”
at all. According to Pickering (1984: 442), Durkheim did not believe that “traditional
religions” (namely Christianity and Judaism) “would persist in Europe, nor did he think
it desirable that they should.” For example, in Moral Education, “traditional religions” are
conceptualized collectively in the singular form “religion” and this is rephrased as
“traditional system.” Durkheim ([1925] 1994c: 200) states:

We can no longer use the traditional system which, as a matter of fact, endured only because of a
miracle of equilibrium and the force of habit. For a long time it had been resting on an insecure
foundation. It was no longer resting on beliefs strong enough to enable it to take care of its
functions effectively.

The same sentiment is also expressed in The Elementary Forms, where Durkheim referred to
“traditional religions” as “old gods,” which have not yet be replaced with new ones: “In
short, the former gods are growing old or dying, and others have not been born” ([1917]
1995: 429).
At the philosophical level, Durkheim’s theory of religion was “a critique of the individ-
ualism and rationalism of Kant’s philosophy” (Turner, 1991: xii). Durkheim hoped for the
creation of what could be called “new religion,” a new modern system of morality, which
“would stand firm in the face of scientific inquiry and rational criticism, for they both had
given rise to it” (Pickering, 1984: 499). Durkheim anticipated that the so-called cult of the
individual, which is a modern “cult” of respect for the individual, of personal dignity,
“would serve to replace traditional religions such as Christianity or Judaism which
Durkheim felt were rapidly becoming outmoded in the modern world” (Marske, 1987: 3).
Thus, Durkheim’s life long quest for the elementary form of religion was motivated by his
desire to find the moral foundation of individualized modern society, more specifically, of
the Third Republic. According to Tiryakian (2009: 106–107):

Rereading The Elementary Forms in the light of this broader context of the Third Republic and
its attachment to the French Revolution, one gets an added dimension in sizing up Durkheim’s
seminal study of “primitive” religion. For the major structure of religion he analyses—beliefs
and rituals, the latter differentiated into “positive rites” (joyful feasts) and “piacular rites” (sad
celebrations)—echo and parallel the major structures of republican civil religion: the Rights of
Man (belief) and its rituals, including imposing state funerals (piacular rites).

Durkheim’s conceptualization of “religion” should be contextualized in relation to his devo-

tion “to a practical philosophy applicable to the social problems of the Third Republic”
(Stock-Morton, 1988: 125). His search for the elementary forms of “religion” was part of his
most challenging assignment to “develop a scientifically grounded morality” which would
give legitimacy to the Third Republic and “would supersede once and for all the traditional
Christian morality and the authority of the Catholic Church” (Tiryakian, 2009: 14).

Concluding remark
My current project aims to interrogate the category “religion” in classical social theories by
historicizing the category within the specific social milieu in which the category was
12 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

originally utilized. When the religious–secular distinction in social theory serves imperialist
states, by sharing the same semantics, contemporary sociology may be tacitly naturalizing
the lingering colonial norms in contemporary society. In this critique, ultimately, I am
hoping to encourage sociologists to treat the category “religion” as the object, not the
tool, of analysis. As “critical religion” perspective highlights, “religion” is a modern cate-
gory. With its binary opposite “secularity,” the religious–secular distinction constitutes the
foundational categories of modernity.
The terms “religious” and “secular” are essentially empty signifiers, which are filled with
meaning generated by the norms and imperatives of the classifiers. The modern states
naturalizes their ruling authorities by proclaiming their value orientations as “secular,”
while categorizing rival value orientations as “religious.” The “secular” has been semanti-
cally associated with “natural reason,” while the “religious” has been associated with
“irrational delusion.”
The religious–secular (more specifically, religious–weltlich and religious–laı¨que) distinc-
tions in Weber’s and Durkheim’s social theories were constructed within the specific social
milieu of imperial Germany and the French Third Republic in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. The construction of these binaries is intimately related to the norms and imper-
atives of the German Empire and the Third Republic. To summarize, Weber’s and
Durkheim’s semantic of “religion” naturalizes the value orientation of the state with
which each of them was associated.
The deconstruction of the religious–secular distinction unsettles the authority of the
ostensible “secular” gaze of sociology analyzing “religion.” The academic discipline of soci-
ology is founded upon a very specific value orientation that emerged in 19th-century
Western Europe. This specific value orientation utilizes a specific notion of “religion” to
demarcate itself from other value orientations and identify itself as its binary opposite
“the secular.” This “secular” self-identity associates itself with “natural reason,” while
assuming that others are ultimately entertaining irrational delusions. Following the post-
colonial self-critique within sociology, the religious–secular binary embedded in social the-
ories and sociological discourse is contaminated by western imperialism. Critical reflections
on the religious–secular distinction, therefore, will make sociologists critically examine the
(modern western) cultural heritage of the discipline.

Note
1. As far as I understand, it seems that the term “secular” (Ger: S€ akular) rarely appears in the writings
of Marx and Weber. Instead, it is the term weltlich that is being used as opposed to “religion.” The
notions of weltlich stems from the concept of Welt (the world). According to Martin Albrow (1990),
Weber’s concept of the world [Welt] is the one defined by the Christian tradition in his own time.
Durkheim uses the term laı¨que, not “secular” (Fr: se´culier), as the binary opposite to “religion.” In
the French context, the term laı¨que thus renders a detachment from the institutions of Catholicism,
Protestantism, and Judaism. To be laı¨que is to be neutral toward all “religions,” which means to be
“independent of all the clergy, detached from all theological concepts” (La Grand, 2013: 64).

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Author biography
Mitsutoshi Horii received his PhD in Sociology in 2005 from the University of Kent, UK.
Currently, he is a Professor at Shumei University in Japan, working at Chaucer College,
Shumei’s overseas campus in the UK. His most recent monograph, The Category of
‘Religion’ in Contemporary Japan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), examines the category
“religion” within the contemporary sociological context of Japan. This book aims to inter-
rogate the assumption that “religion” is a universal concept. From this perspective, his other
recent works have “provincialized” the modern western sociological discourse by examining
the religion–secular distinction, which is embedded in the writings of classical and contem-
porary social theorists. His past research includes sociological studies of risks and uncer-
tainties in Japan. His publications in this area (both in English and in Japanese, including
three Japanese monographs) examine the emergence of women-only commuter train car-
riages, the anxiety over the declining fertility rate, and the cultural practice of surgical mask-
wearing in public.