Durkheim and the liberal tradition

The article critically examines the interpretation of Émile Durkheim as a conservative thinker, most notably advanced by Robert Nisbet, according to whom Durkheimian sociology derived from the French counter-revolutionary tradition. The author argues instead that Durkheim’s theoretical framework should be understood as significantly rooted in the nineteenth-century French liberal tradition. After analyzing the genealogies of sociology elaborated by Durkheim himself, the essay shows how he positioned himself in continuity with thinkers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, Condorcet, Constant, Guizot, and Tocqueville, rather than with traditionalists like de Maistre or de Bonald. The core of the argument concerns the relationship between the French Revolution, individualism, and social transformation. For Durkheim, modern individualism was not a pathological force of disintegration, but the historical product of the growth of the division of labor, state centralization, and the evolution of modern societies. By distinguishing between “egoistic” and “moral” individualism, he defended the principles of 1789, the rights of man, democracy, and rationalism as constitutive elements of modernity. The article concludes that Durkheim’s sociology reformulated central themes of French liberalism in sociological terms, developing a theory of social cohesion compatible with individual freedom, democratic participation, and collective integration.