Emil Durkheim is often referred to as the "Founding Father" of sociology. Due to a family tradition, Durkheim was supposed to become a rabbi. However, he was agnostic and believed that there were other means to solve world conflicts other than religion. As a result, Durkheim used science to deal with concerns thus creating sociology. Durkheim had a major concern for morality. He believed the world to be completely immoral and began to study cultures to discover the reasons for this. From his studies he proposed two approaches to moral order. The first approach deals with the nature of humans, and the second approach deals with the nature of society. The purpose of this essay is to give an understanding of moral order, the nature of humans and society, and their consequences according to Emil Durkheim. In order to accomplish this I will explain Durkheim's views on moral order and the nature of humans and society, and show how they interact by relating them to real life examples to get a better understanding of them.
As a sociologist, Durkheim developed a great concern for morality. He wrote many books all dealing with this issue. His quest was to discover how a society could attain moral order. Durkheim figured moral order to be when everyone is playing their role and doing their part to make the society run smoothly. He found that his society in France was almost the complete opposite of that which he called moral chaos. Moral chaos is a cut-throat society where everyone is on their own agenda trying to better themselves anyway they can whether it be morally or immorally. Durkheim studied an example of moral order in early hunting and gathering societies. He saw that everyone played their individual role; some hunted, others gathered. However, they all worked for the good of the society, not for the good of the individual and that is why there society ran smoothly. However, Durkheim found that moral order is extremely problematic.
