““According to Durkheim, the essence of religion in modern society is the same as religion in primitive society.” Comment.” (2014)
Émile Durkheim chose Australian totemism in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) not as a curiosity but as the “simplest” case in which the essence of all religion could be seen without later accretions. The statement is therefore his own methodological wager: forms change, essence does not.
What the “essence” is
- Sacred–profane division: religion is “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things” that unites believers into one moral community. Gods are not essential; Buddhism has none.
- Society as the real referent: the totem is at once the emblem of the clan and of its god, so “the god and the society are only one”. Worship is society’s collective self-affirmation.
- Ritual as re-creation of solidarity: periodic gatherings revive the collective conscience that daily life wears down.
Why the essence persists in modern society
- Content changes with the division of labour. As societies grow differentiated, the sacred becomes abstract and universal. In “Individualism and the Intellectuals” (1898) Durkheim called the resulting cult of the individual the one creed a plural society can share.
- The mechanism stays the same. Durkheim noted that the early French Revolution turned Fatherland, Liberty and Reason into sacred things, and he expected future “hours of creative effervescence” to produce new rites.
- Indian evidence: the 2025 Maha Kumbh at Prayagraj, which the Uttar Pradesh government put at over 66 crore visits, is textbook Durkheimian ritual, a mass assembly renewing shared identity. The reverence given to the Constitution, the flag and national heroes shows the sacred attaching to secular symbols as well.
Arguments against the claim
- Plurality and conflict: modern societies hold many faiths. Religion often divides rather than integrates, as communal violence in India shows, and Karl Marx would add that it can legitimise domination.
- Secularisation and privatisation: Bryan Wilson traced religion’s loss of social significance, and Thomas Luckmann saw it retreat into invisible, personal meaning-systems. The individual seeker is not the clan at worship.
- Weak base: E. E. Evans-Pritchard (Theories of Primitive Religion, 1965) showed that the Arunta were untypical and totemism is not religion’s earliest form. An argument from “origins” cannot fix a timeless essence.
- Circularity: if anything that binds is “religion”, the thesis cannot be falsified.
Conclusion
The claim holds at the level of function and form: every society sacralises what binds it and renews that bond through ritual. It fails if read as saying modern religion is totemism in content, scale or integrative power. Durkheim is best read as having found an enduring sacralising process, one that now attaches as readily to nation, constitution and human rights as to gods.