ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of Durkheim’s thought on emotions and affections. Although Durkheim did not write about these topics, we can reconstruct his overall view of them. In this text, we point out passages dealing with the emotional dimension in his main works – The Rules of the Sociological Method, The Division of Labour in Society, Suicide, and The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. The methodology for the analysis is the establishment of links between Durkheim’s emotional dimension and his diagnosis of the moral integration of modern societies. Our review has a dual purpose – to reconstruct Durkheim’s thinking on moral integration, while at the same time pointing out its connections with the emotional aspect. The argument here is that even though the author did not directly cover the emotional dimension, it is in no way a fringe issue in his works. Rather, it is an essential piece of his perspective and is part of the basis for his thinking on the normative constitution of social life, integration, and social change.
