FOUNDING SOCIOLOGY AS A SCIENCE

DURKHEIM, ÉMILE.

Quid secundatus Politicae Scientiae Instituendae Contulerit. Hanc Thesim Parisiensi Litterarum facultati proponebat ad Doctoris Gradum Promovendus.

Burdigalae, Ex Typis Gounouilhou, 1892. 8vo. Bound with the scarce original printed wrappers in mathcing recent light greenish-grey boards with title to spine.- A few markings and spotting to wrappers and tiny paper-restorations to corners, A part from light pencil-annotations, a very fine and clean copy. 74, (2) pp.

The scarce first edition of Durkheim's earliest published work, his subsidiary Latin thesis on Montesquieu, which anticipates many of his most important theories and contains important observations that are formative for his later work. As such, the present work constitutes his earliest exposition of sociology as a science.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), the father of sociology, is credited with making sociology a science and established sociology as a recognized academic discipline. Together with Karl Marx and Max Weber he is considered the principal architect of modern social science.

The present work, which serves as the companion to his "The Division of Labour in Society", printed the year after, in 1893, analyses Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws" as a foundational work of modern sociology, explains how Montesquieu's distinctions define the conditions and boundaries of sociology and how the work is the first to establish the main principles of political science. One of Durkheim's major contributions lies in his insistence on taking the total society as his theoretical frame of reference, which is quite explicitly observed in the present analysis and explanation of Montesquieu.

Order-nr.: 44032