ABSTRACT
In the preface to the first, 1893 edition of The Division of Labour, Durkheim sets out the basis of his lifelong project for a science of morals which is also the key to ethics. As a science, it observes, describes, classifies and seeks to explain the ‘facts of moral life’. As the key to ethics, it helps us to address practical problems, propose reforms, and clarify, correct, decide on ideals. In both roles it very much involves a comparative approach to social and moral life. In the original introduction to The Division of Labour — unfortunately omitted in standard modern editions - Durkheim insists on the need to identify societies according to their type and stage of development. 1 Practices and institutions can qualify as ‘normal’ if they are general throughout societies of the same type and at the same stage of development of this type. Hence a whole society can be in some way deviant compared with others of its type and stage of development. We might think of slavery in nineteenth-century America, or apartheid in modern South Africa, as well as Durkheim's own example of the tolerance in Italy of acts of brigandage (1893b: 34/t.l933b: 432). But the point of importance here is Durkheim's concern with the dynamics of change and development within a social type.
