ABSTRACT
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Durkheim’s last major work, casts a shadow over the author’s earlier writings. While studying this work many readers have become acutely aware of the contrast between the book and his earlier programmatic and substantive studies. The differences are the source of controversial answers to questions of the internal logic of the development of his work and the degree of continuity and discontinuity within it. They suggest a possible rupture in his intellectual biography.
