ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors place Emile Durkheim's sociology in its cultural context as a typical fragment of social commentary from the fin de siecle. They explore some of the affinities of this sociology with other intellectual movements of the fin de siecle and contrast, sharply, this contextual reading of Durkheim's sociology with the ahistorical, vulgar misreading of Durkheim found in Parsonian functionalism. Durkheim seems to have adopted many of Arthur Schopenhauer's starting points, which include pessimism and a reluctance to accept the unequivocal power of reason. Fin de siecle sociology drew more heavily on the then dominant anti-intellectualist writings of Schopenhauer, J. J. Bachofen, Henri Bergson, William James, and F. Nietzsche than any Enlightenment narratives. Georg Simmel's anti-Enlightenment phiphilosophy is an antecedent to the postmodernist rebellion against the Enlightenment. In Seduction, Jean Baudrillard equates seduction with the feminine: With this bold connection, he links postmodern consumerism, concern with appearances, desire, and insatiability with the feminine principle.
