ABSTRACT
Max Weber began his study of the Protestant ethic by displaying some musical and architectural examples of what he thought was the pervasive rationalism of Western society. Emile Durkheim, for whom the real explanation of suicide and religion—that is to say, the most personal and the most transcendental of acts and experiences—was to be found in sociology, believed that this science had nothing to say about art. In principle most sociologists would balk before accepting Durkheim’s courteous but unequivocal dismissal of art as professional “data.” But neither will they emulate Weber’s pointed acceptance of it. Despite their ring of noble thought and even nobler ambitions Sullivan’s pronouncements speak for a profoundly arrogant and profoundly naive intellectual tradition. As Duncan himself admits, Sullivan was an autocratic aesthetician quite free of the common touch. He did not really think that democracy would create its own architecture.
