Sacred and profane in the pedagogical thought of Emile Durkheim

Abstract

The article analyzes lectures Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) prepared for two courses in the field of education, “Pedagogical evolution” and “Moral education”, which were posthumously published in 1938. As forms of exposition of Durkheim’s pedagogical thought, these lectures present a perspective of education that is both historical, emphasizing continuities and discontinuities of teaching in the West, and anthropological, based on the contemporary reality of the sociologist. Considering this constitutional dyad of Durkheim’s thought, based on concepts of the sacred and profane the article presents social tensions that reveal a conflictive perspective of educational reality. These tensions involve a less consensual sociological view of education and confer to practices such as reading, the moderate exercise of punishment, and the diffusion of knowledge, ambiguous roles particular to the duality of sacred and profane. Durkheim thus simultaneously reveals dramatic and dynamic attributes of his thought, without neglecting the moral nature of education.