ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to portray Emile Durkheim's sociology as one that followed the German Romantic lead to regard society as will and idea. In "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions," Durkheim seems to have borrowed Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophical assumptions, even specific phrases, to conclude that everyone leads a "double existence" torn between will and idea. In general, for both Schopenhauer and Durkheim, perceptions are private, subjective, and pertain to the will, while conceptions are essentially representations, public, and social. A consequence of Schopenhauer's thought on perceptions versus conceptions is that he felt that science must begin with inductive thinking and be completed in deductions whereas neopositivists have reversed this understanding. Schopenhauer treats both kinds of knowledge as a unity, in that the wise person will know how to move from perception to conception—but feels that perceptive knowledge, which is associated with the will, is superior to the other type, which merely avoids errors.
