“‘Why does the individual, while becoming more autonomous, depend more upon society?’ (Durkheim). How has the author tried to answer this question?” (1991)
Émile Durkheim put this apparent paradox in the Preface to the first edition of The Division of Labour in Society (1893) and called it the starting point of the whole work. Modern people seem more individual and at the same time more bound to one another. How can personality and solidarity grow together? His answer is that the division of labour creates a new kind of solidarity that produces the individual rather than suppressing it.
Step 1: Two forms of solidarity
| Mechanical solidarity | Organic solidarity | |
|---|---|---|
| Basis | Likeness: shared beliefs and sentiments | Difference and functional interdependence |
| Collective conscience | Strong, concrete, religious; covers most of the individual’s mind | Weaker, more abstract, leaves room for individual judgement |
| Structure | Segmental (clans, villages) | Organised, specialised occupations |
| Law (the indicator) | Repressive (penal) | Restitutive (civil, commercial, contract) |
Under mechanical solidarity the individual is barely separate from the group. Solidarity and individuality vary inversely.
Step 2: Specialisation makes autonomy and dependence two sides of one process
- As dynamic (moral) density rises, competition is resolved through specialisation, not elimination.
- Each specialist develops a distinct personality and sphere of action: autonomy grows.
- Yet no specialist is self-sufficient. The more narrowly a person works, the more they rely on countless others, like organs in a body: dependence grows.
- Durkheim used the restitutive law of the courts as an index of this change, measuring an invisible moral fact through a visible one.
Step 3: Autonomy is itself a social product
- Against Herbert Spencer’s utilitarian picture of free individuals bound only by contract, Durkheim argued that contract rests on a non-contractual element. Society supplies the rules that decide which contracts are valid and just and how they are enforced. The individual’s freedom to bargain is guaranteed by society.
- The individual is historically late: society comes first, and individualism develops out of it.
- The shrunken collective conscience keeps one powerful belief, the cult of the individual: human dignity is made sacred (“Individualism and the Intellectuals”, 1898).
- The state and occupational groups protect individuals from the tyranny of local and family groups. Freedom, for Durkheim, is a set of socially guaranteed rights.
An Indian illustration
The Supreme Court’s nine-judge ruling in K. S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) made privacy and personal autonomy fundamental rights. Autonomy here is secured through a collective legal order, much as Durkheim argued. Likewise, a migrant software engineer choosing her own career and spouse depends on markets, courts and credentials far beyond her kin group.
Limits of the answer
- Anomic and forced division of labour, such as class inequality at birth, block the harmony he expected. Durkheim admitted these as “abnormal forms”.
- Karl Marx would say specialisation produces alienation, not moral personality.
- Critics note that restitutive law is a narrow proxy, and that repressive law has not declined as neatly as he predicted.
Conclusion
Durkheim resolves the paradox by denying that individual and society are opposites. Individuality is created by social differentiation and protected by shared morality, so becoming more autonomous means becoming more socially interdependent. Today’s debates on rights and regulation still turn on that insight.