ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the work of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber on religion as two primary representatives of classical sociology. It demonstrates how certain theological concepts, notably that of transcendence, remain important for social scientific study of religion and how Durkheim and Weber's engagements with transcendence influence the sociological understanding of religion to the present day. Durkheim presents a transcendence of the collectivity over the individual as the key to his sociological definition of religion. Meanwhile, Weber presents transcendence as a motivation for social action and a reference point for the legitimation of social organization with which religion is involved. These theories are rooted in earlier work from Friedrich Schleiermacher, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Ernst Troeltsch, and others and have been taken up more recently, especially by Peter Berger and Hans Joas. Durkheim and Weber identify what Karl Heim calls “intramundane relations of transcendence” as a key for understanding religion sociologically.
