The College of Sociology ( Fr. Le Collège de Sociologie ) is a sociological circle that existed in Paris from 1937 to 1939, whose leaders were Georges Bataille , Roger Caillois and Michelle Leiris .
Content
Title
The word "college" is used in this case not as an educational institution, but as a "collegium" - an association of intellectuals or scientists who are discussing the problems of a particular scientific discipline. There is another interpretation based on the most ancient etymology of the word “college” - the highest council of druids , on which important decisions were made regarding public order.
Goals
The main goals and objectives of the community were set out in two works: in the "Declaration on the Creation of the College of Sociology", which was written in March 1937 and published in the journal Acephale and the manifesto For College of Sociology, published in July 1938 in La Nouvelle Revue Française ":
- Social sciences appear as a promising field, but the subject of their research remains narrow, because they are limited to "analysis of the structures of primitive societies, leaving aside modern societies." Thus, the community should strive to holistically study social structures. In particular, the object of study, it was decided to choose the relationship between the being of man and the being of society.
- Creation of a moral community, the members of which would strive to "advance as far as possible in their research in this direction." At the same time, it should be free, and any member of the circle can bring their ideas to it.
- The exact subject of study is sacred sociology, since during the study of any society in all its manifestations one can detect the presence of the sacred.
Learning the Sacred
Sacred can be defined as a fundamental reality that unites people even more than forms of interaction based on the division of labor, specialization and functionalization. When considering the sacred issue, Georges Bataille and other members of the community analyze closed societies (secret organizations, religious orders, the army, political parties of a totalitarian nature, etc.). However, disagreements arise among members of society over the nature of the sacred. The differences in the representations of the sacred are seen when comparing the two texts of the reports: “The sacred in everyday life” by Leiris and “Attraction and aversion” by Bataille . Leiris proposed the following classification of all societies in terms of the sacred:
- Communities where there is no sacred yet, that is, animal communities;
- Communities where the sacred takes its proper place;
- Communities where the sacred is on the path to extinction, that is, modern societies.
Although all members of the community supported this division, it allows a different approach to the content of the concept of the sacred and, in the end, to explore it using various research methods. Thus, Leiris believes that in the modern world, the sacred, although it has not disappeared, has changed, lost its collective character and moved into the sphere of the individual and unconscious, which is already an area of study of psychology, not sociology. Bataille attributes the limited sociological methods of studying the sacred contradictory nature of sacred phenomena, since even the Latin word sacer has anonymous names: 1) awe-inspiring, great 2) doomed to underground gods, damned, vile. These contradictions led to the fact that the formation of sacred sociology was never carried out.
College and Fascism
The college considered not only scientific, but also political issues. In general, the political views of the community were formulated by Batu as "radically opposed to fascist aggression, unconditionally hostile to the rule of the bourgeoisie, unable to trust communism."
Bataille claimed:
| Fascism resonates in society when it is in decline: “when the ruling class, due to the weakness of its power, lost the opportunity to benefit from the rejection of the central forces of society, which allowed us to appropriate wealth. Then he runs into rampant nostalgia for the power that allows you to establish order and make good use of it. But he is powerless to restore such power, moving along the path of criminal generation of sacred forces, since he remains at the same time directly interested in it and too cowardly. Therefore, he then resorted to direct violence, to the assertion of a new military-type force, which is associated with everything that remains of the sacred forces, in particular those sacred forces that are directly related to power, such as protecting the fatherland. |
A statement by the College of Sociology in connection with the international crisis of 1938 (Munich conspiracy) states that the lack of reaction in the face of war shows a person’s loss of courage. The members of the association saw the reason for this as "the weakening of relevant social ties, which are practically nullified by the development of bourgeois individualism."
Criticism
The scientific concepts of the College are based on the sociological works of E. Durkheim , M. Moss , L. Levy-Bruhl . Durkheim defended the idea of religion without God and was convinced that the sacred was created by society, which members of the circle agreed to. Heidegger was the opposite opinion, who was able to theoretically combine the ontological and phenomenological view of the sacred. He believed that "the sacred [sacred] - the essential space of divinity, preserves the dimension for the gods and for God." He emphasized that "it is only from the truth of Genesis that it is for the first time possible to comprehend the essence of the Sacred."
Roland Barth in Mythologies (1957) described how sacralization of the profane occurs. According to Bart, the reproduction of the sacred is when a myth transforms the transitory into the eternal. The profane is transformed into the sacred through mass culture and mass consciousness. Subsequently, everyday life, everyday life, in other words, profane, becomes the main value.
Impact
The activities of the circle made a huge contribution to the study of sociology. Rene Girard continued the reflections of the representatives of the French sociological school and the College of Sociology about sacrifice as an expression of the sacred. In his work Violence and the Sacred (1972), he emphasized the important role of violence in creating unity in society. So, after the sacrificial murder comes peace. The role of the sacred is the separation of violence from society, because violence is attributed to deities, and thus no one feels guilty.
Sources
- Olie Denis, College of Sociology, edited by V. Yu. Bystrov - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2004 - pp. 4-10
- College of Sociology and the Fourth Political Theory. Against liberalism, fascism and communism
- Georges Bataille, Damned Part, Ladomir, 1999 - S. 10-20
- Religo Almanac of the Moscow Religious Society. Issue 1, S. 30-41
- Understanding the concept of “sacred” in modern philosophical discourse / A. M. Zherdeva // Uchenye zapiski TNU im. V. and Vernadsky. Series “Philosophy. Sociology". - Simferopol, 2008 .-- T. 21 (60). - No. 3. - S. 114-121.