ABSTRACT
Hollis reads the sociological model of action as though the distinction between the sacred and the profane had been abolished and in effect all had become sacred. This eliding of the distinction bypasses one of the most important contributions of Durkheimian sociology: the distinction between the sacred and profane does not merely divide social acts and social space (e.g. ritualistic from mundane action) it runs right through the self. On the Durkheimian account, both Adam and Eve will vacillate between self-and other-regarding actions because they are the embodiment of the social and globules of self-regarding desire at one and the same time; both saint and sinner. How far the saint-sinner will stumble along the Enlightenment Trail is neither predictable nor aided alone by Reason’s lodestar. It is the outcome of a struggle not merely between Adam and Eve, or between self-and other-regarding action as mutually exclusive options, but within the selves of Adam and Eve. Hollis takes the sociological tradition to be making a kind of temporal claim: ‘social before they are individual, and plural before they are singular’ (1998:106, emphasis added). Even in the anti-utilitarian Durkheimian tradition, the more interesting claim is not that the one came before, or has priority over, the other, but rather that the social and the individual, the singular and the plural, are in a constant tension within social institutions, within the interactions of actors, and, perhaps most importantly, within each self. Without the social bond Adam and Eve remain vulnerable to the centipede’s sting. With only the social bond they have no interest in moving along the trail. The task of sociology is not to resolve their dilemma, but to analyse the social preconditions of their possible success or failure.
