The Family, the Corporations, and the State

Durkheim’s communicative conception of „consciousness”

Abstract

Durkheim’s writings and lectures from the second half of the 1890s, discussing the family, the corporations, and the state, point to a sociology of knowledge that is different from, and less well-known than, his later version of the sociology of knowledge. In this conception, communication plays a central role. Intensive relationships and high social density produce specific ideas within families and corporations and more universal, integrative ones within a state. For this approach to the sociology of knowledge, the main question is no more the relation between ’existential base’ and ’spiritual products’.