ABSTRACT
The notion of studying anomie is valuable and interesting, clearly, because of the fortune of the word in modern sociology. As one gets closer to the contemporary debates on anomie, the increase of available literature and the intellectual affinity for the issues discussed seem to make one’s research much easier - but this is only apparently so. If it is true that primary and secondary sources on Durkheim’s notion of anomie abound, it is also true that, to paraphrase Francis Bacon’s remark, the idols of our “sociological cave” prevent us from studying the recent past in a sufficiently detached, objective manner. It is easy to accept uncritically the secondary literature on anomie theory, but knowing the pre-sociological history of the concept can alert us against such a temptation.
