Durkheim and the Jews of France (Volume 1997) (Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism) - Hardcover

Strenski, Ivan

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9780226777238: Durkheim and the Jews of France (Volume 1997) (Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226777235 ISBN 13: 9780226777238

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1997

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Ivan Strenski debunks the common notion that there is anything "essentially" Jewish in Durkheim's work. Seeking the Durkheim inside the real world of Jews in France rather than the imagined Jewishness inside Durkheim himself, Strenski adopts a Durkheimian approach to understanding Durkheim's thought. In so doing he shows for the first time that Durkheim's sociology (especially his sociology of religion) took form in relation to the Jewish intellectual life of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France.

Strenski begins each chapter by weighing particular claims (some anti-Semitic, some not) for the Jewishness of Durkheim's work. In each case Strenski overturns the claim while showing that it can nonetheless open up a fruitful inquiry into the relation of Durkheim to French Jewry. For example, Strenski shows that Durkheim's celebration of ritual had no innately Jewish source but derived crucially from work on Hinduism by the Jewish Indologist Sylvain L�vi, whose influence on Durkheim and his followers has never before been acknowledged.

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About the Author:

Ivan Strenski is the Holstein Family Community Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth Century History and Religion in Relation: Method, Application, and Moral Location.

From Library Journal:

In this provocative book, Strenski (religious studies, Univ. of California, Riverside) attacks the widely held view that there is anything "essentially" Jewish in the works of noted French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917). Strenski argues that Durkheim's sociology (particularly that of religion), rather than having any inherent Jewish content, developed within the context of Jewish intellectual life in the French Third Republic. In one of the most interesting chapters, "Sylvain Levi: Mauss's Second Uncle," Strenski argues that Durkheim's analysis of ritual was heavily influenced by the universalist scholarship of Levi (1863-1935) and his studies of the religions of India. A specialized, scholarly work appropriate for Jewish studies collections and for academic libraries.?Mark Weber, Kent State Univ. Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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