ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, we were concerned to identify Durkheim’s work as an important break with analytical individualism, and, also, as a polemic against the classicist notion of unfettered individualism. Utilitarian ideology (and practice) could be seen, on the one hand (in the egoistic case) to encourage the desires of the individual conscience, and, on the other (in the anomic situation) to provide insufficient restraint on the individual conscience. The discussion of norms, therefore, was double-edged. Norms did not merely inhibit deviant behaviour (anomie); they could also encourage and sustain it (egoism).
