الانتحار

by Émile Durkheim, إميل دوركايم, حسن عودة (Translator)

يتداول الناس كثيراً في أحاديثهم كلمة الانتحار، حتى ليمكن الظن بأن معناها معروف من الجميع، وأن تعريفها لا طائل منه. غير أن كلمات اللغة المستعملة، مثلها مثل المفاهيم التي تعبر عنها غالباً ما يشوبها الغموض في الواقع. لذا فإن العالم الذي يستعملها مثلما يسمعها من ألسن الناس،دون أن يخضعها لتمثيلات أخرى يتعرض لأفدح الالتباسات. ليس فقط لأن مفهومها فضفاض يصعب تحديده، حيث أنه يتغير من حالة إلى أخرى بحسب مقاصد الكلام، بل لأن التصنيف الذي تنتج عنه لا يصدر عن تحليل منهجي أيضاً ولكنه ينقل فقط انطباعات مبهمة لدى العامة من الناس، وهو ما يفضي دوماً إلى جمع طائفة من الظواهر متباينة أشد التباين تحت عنوان واحد، دونما تمييز، أو إلى تسمية وقائع ذات طبيعة واحدة بأسماء شتى. فإذا انسقنا إذن وراء المفهوم الشائع فنحن نجازف بأن نميز ما ينبغي أن يكون ملتبساً، أو نغلف بالغموض ما ينبغي أن يكون متميزاً، فنهمل على هذا النحو القرابة الحقيقية بين الأشياء، ونسيء بالتالي، فهم طبيعتها. فنحن لا نفسر الأشياء إلا عن طريق المقارنة بينها. لذا فإن أي بحث علمي لا يمكنه بلوغ غايته إلا إذا استند إلى حوادث قابلة للمقارنة، وهو لا يدرك النجاح إلا بقدر ما يكون أكثر ضماناً لجمع كافة الحوادث التي يمكن مقارنتها، بعضها ببعض، بنحوناجح. غير أن تلك القرابة الطبيعية بين الكائنات يتعذر الوصول إليها وفهمها بنحو يقيني عبر معاينة سطحية على غرار تلك التي ينتج عنها المصطلح العامي الشائع. وهكذا فإن العالم لا يسعه أن يتخذ، كموضوعات لأبحاثه مجموعات الحوادث التامة التكوين حسبما تتداولها كلمات اللغة الشائعة ولكنه ملزم بأن يكوّن هو نفسه مجموعات الحوادث التي يرغب بدراستها، ابتغاء أن يمنحها المجانسة والخصوصية اللازمتين لها كي يتمكن من معالجتها معالجة علمية. على هذا الغرار، فإن عالم النبات، حين يتحدث عن الأزهار أو الثمار، وعالم الحيوان حينما يتحدث عن الأسماك أو الحشرات يختاران مختلف تلك الألفاظ بالمعاني التي كان عليهما تحديدها مسبقاً.

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction, Psychology, Philosophy, Anthropology, Classics, Social Science

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1897

About the author

Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in modernity; an era in which traditional social and religious ties are no longer assumed, and in which new social institutions have come into being. His first major sociological work was The Division of Labor in Society (1893). In 1895, he published his Rules of the Sociological Method and set up the first European department of sociology, becoming France's first professor of sociology.

In 1896, he established the journal L'Année Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a study of suicide rates amongst Catholic and Protestant populations, pioneered modern social research and served to distinguish social science from psychology and political philosophy. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), presented a theory of religion, comparing the social and cultural lives of aboriginal and modern societies.

Durkheim was also deeply preoccupied with the acceptance of sociology as a legitimate science. He refined the positivism originally set forth by Auguste Comte, promoting what could be considered as a form of epistemological realism, as well as the use of the hypothetico-deductive model in social science. For him, sociology was the science of institutions,[citation needed] its aim being to discover structural social facts. Durkheim was a major proponent of structural functionalism, a foundational perspective in both sociology and anthropology. In his view, social science should be purely holistic; that is, sociology should study phenomena attributed to society at large, rather than being limited to the specific actions of individuals.

He remained a dominant force in French intellectual life until his death in 1917, presenting numerous lectures and published works on a variety of topics, including the sociology of knowledge, morality, social stratification, religion, law, education, and deviance. Durkheimian terms such as "collective consciousness" have since entered the popular lexicon.

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a seriously interesting book. It is an early classic of sociology (and of sociological thinking) and so, as such, it is one of those books you are supposed to at least know-of, if not to have actually read. And, despite it being rather long, it is surprisingly easy to read.

In many ways this book is interested in something much deeper than just suicide – that probably sounds daft and perhaps even unfeeling, but there clearly is a deeper problem occupying Durkheim’s attention in this book. And that is – to what extent does the society or the groups within society that we belong to influence us in our most fundamental behaviours? Which is why his using suicide as the theme to this enquiry is so brilliant. Let’s face it, there are few things we can do that would be more likely to be attributed to our own ‘individual choice’ than suicide. Virtually all groups in society frown upon the very idea of taking one’s own life (most religions have remarkably strict rules against suicide – so much so that someone who suicides might even be barred from the afterlife or even face eternal punishment), which would seem to imply that to go ahead and commit suicide anyway would be the ultimate act of self-assertion. Durkheim is seeking to show in this book that the thing most likely to decide whether or not you commit suicide are factors outside of your own control, that is, due to the society you belong to, rather than your individual ‘preferences’ or ‘choices’. He shows that men are more likely to suicide than women, that Protestants are more likely than Jews or Catholics to take their own lives – and even that more educated people are more likely to do so as well. So, why might that be the case?

His answer (after disposing of a string of other explanations that at first glance appear to make sense) is the level of social integration someone feels strongly influences who will take their own life. That is, the more isolated you feel from society, or the less clear you feel that your role in society is, the more likely it is that you will kill yourself. Catholics feel they belong to a community more than Protestants (who have a ‘personal’ relationship with god, rather than a community one, per se). I read a number of years ago that when the Conservative Party win elections in the UK that the suicide rate increases. And that this was explained in Durkheim’s terms – that everyone knows that Conservatives basically hate people who can’t look after themselves, and so this general lack of social compassion drives people to kill themselves. Whether this still holds true today that the Labour Party in the UK is hell bent on also being the party of rugged individualism is hard to say, but perhaps people still do see the Labour Party in Britain as the last hope for community spirit and engagement.

He points out that suicide has become an increasing problem as society has become increasingly more ‘civilised’ – as people become more educated and, concomitantly, as people increasingly feel they are themselves ‘individuals’ that are personally responsible for their position in life. Such personal responsibility linked with a sense of social isolation lays the ground for the possibility that people will choose to end their lives.

Durkheim presents four varieties of suicide –these all being due to imbalances in a person’s moral or social integration – but the point is that what, to all intents and purposes, looks like the supreme act of individualism is in fact strongly influenced by socially explicable causes. So that, if one were to take the case of the Jews, you might think that a group that was greatly loathed within Europe at the time would have much more reason to commit suicide in greater numbers than those around them who were relatively better liked. That this didn’t prove to be the case was explicable by Durkheim on the basis that Jews protected themselves by forming very strong intra-group bonds – that is, they look out for each other and make sure everyone feels they are looked after and valued. People look out for each other and are looked after in turn. In other cases people had clear roles in life and therefore were much less likely to end their lives, as such an act would abandon that ‘needed’ role within their community. Essentially, when we feel we have a larger role than merely ourselves, we are less likely to want to kill ourselves. Despite all of the protestations of free-market types, we are social animals and happiest within social groups.

There has been criticism of some of the conclusions drawn in this work – but as a case study it really does have the power to make you gasp in wonder. The incredible amount of work this book required, the thought that has gone into ensuring the data was able to be compared, and the effort in thinking through possible objections to the conclusions drawn from the data is really quite stunning.

As I said at the beginning, this is a foundation work of modern sociology. It is also a remarkable look at a topic it is hard to not find fascinating and one that helps show that a careful analysis can help to challenge some of our primary assumptions and provide us with tools likely to explain ‘why’.

[Joshua Nomen-Mutatio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in college. It was interesting and dryly written. It draws connections between variables and confounds like class status, religious tradition, and literacy and the rate with which people in various cross-sections of these things decide that life is not worth living. Turns out that money and god and reading aren't enough to keep people protected from themselves.

A groundbreaking work of social science.

Here's what happens when you try to kill yourself with Google:



"Suicide is another thing that's so frowned upon in this society, but honestly, life isn't for everybody. It really isn't. It's sad when kids kill themselves 'cause they didn't really give it a chance, but life is like a movie: if you've sat through more than half of it and it sucked every second so far, it probably isn't gonna get great right at the very end for you and make it all worthwhile. No one should blame you for walking out early." —Doug Stanhope

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars. This is a very difficult work to review. There's a lot of good here, but there's also a lot of bad. I'll start with the good.

-Durkheim exposes a lot of facts about suicide that have been successfully validated by contemporary studies of the subject. For example, the greater likelihood of unmarried individuals to commit suicide, the increased likelihood of suicide with age, the greater likelihood of educated individuals to commit suicide, etc.

-Durkheim's thesis that, at least for the egoistic type, suicide results from, basically, a loss or diminishment of the bond between an individual and a social group is a theory that carries some weight.

-Following the previous bullet, Durkheim's categorization of suicide into various types. The types he describes may be debatable, but the recognition that all suicides are not the same is important.

-The emphasis that suicide is not a purely individual phenomenon.

And now, some of the bad things.

-Durkheim's insistence that individual qualities are not really relevant when discussing determining factors of suicide, because suicide is determined by social causes.

-The false claim that environmental (or "cosmic," to use Durkheim's own language) factors have no influence on suicide.

-The skeptical notion that occupational groups or corporate factions can provide the requisite social bond and moral guidepost to diminish the frequency of suicides in the future.

-Durkheim's analysis of the legitimacy of calling suicide immoral by means of offending the general sensibilities of society... or something like that.

-Some boring passages of presenting statistic after statistic.

All in all, a few unique and still powerful ideas, although some parts are of little more than historical interest.

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chronology
Introduction
Further Reading
Translator's Note

--On Suicide

Notes

[Seth Augenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blah blah blah - the charts are skull-fuckingly boring. Still, the best lesson in human existence imaginable. (It took some number crunching to prove that we swallow and spit ourselves up interminably, for eternity.)

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it would be time for more Durkheim. I have only read one of his works, "Elementary Forms of Religious Life" and found that if it were possible for one book to change a life this would be it for me. Durkheim's meticulous reading of primitive religion (his term-"Elementary Forms" was written over 100 years ago) led him, seemingly inexorably, to the conclusion that when we say we worship the divine we are substituting the term divine for our own transcendental nature created when humankind first organized into social groups. It remains impressive for its art more than its science but I can still recall the emotional thrill of first reading his conclusions. "Suicide" is a different text in many ways, most significantly that it was a book written for professionals involved in the still new (very new) discipline of sociology.

Published in 1897, the work is considered groundbreaking for showcasing an in-depth case study of suicide which revealed that there can be social causes, that suicide wasn't only the product of a damaged mind or one that couldn't cope with mental illness or physical disease. Based on what he saw in the data Durkheim argued that reasons for suicide can have a social component, not just individual psychological circumstances. Durkheim reasoned that social integration in particular is a strong, even determining factor and the more socially integrated a person is. the more connected to society and with a feeling that they belong to and function in something larger than themselves, means that their lives makes sense within the social context and less likely they are to commit suicide.

He identified four main types of self-annihilation that he characterizes as "suicide among the sane."
Anomic suicide is based on Durkheim's first major work, "The Division of Labor in Society", in which he introduced the concept of "anomie", an individual's moral confusion and lack of social direction which often related to dramatic social and economic upheaval beyond the control of his control.

Altruistic suicide is characterized by a sense of being overwhelmed by a group's goals and beliefs to the extent that he submerges his own personality and life force to the group's needs. Suicide bombers are a current example.

Egoistic suicide happens when people feel totally detached from society. a prolonged sense of not belonging, of not being integrated in a community. It results from the suicide's sense that he isn't rooted to anything . This absence can give rise to feelings of meaninglessness, apathy, melancholy, and depression. Durkheim calls such detachment "excessive individuation".

Fatalistic suicide occurs under conditions of extreme social regulation that result in oppressive conditions and a denial of the self and of agency. It is the opposite of anomic suicide, and occurs in societies so oppressive their inhabitants would rather die than continue to live. An example would be a prisoner who would rather die than live in a prison with constant abuse and arbitrary rules.

In exploring the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics Durkheim argued that stronger social control among Catholics results in lower suicide rates than among the Protestants, explained by Durkheim as the result of a tradition of free inquiry coming from the Reformation as opposed to the blind faith and obedience of those of the Catholic faith. Durkheim sees Catholicism as more a unified community than the multiple confessions of the Reformed church which leads to rootlessness and anomie. These broad statements, especially when the result of an epistemologically suspect basis and too great an acceptance of data that is so heterogeneous as to be misleading, that gets Durkheim into trouble with social scientists today but is part of his brilliant if flawed deductive reasoning that keeps him the forefront to sociological theory. His counter-examples to what the data "should" show are brilliant.

He uses Jews in Europe as an example, noting that "the long-standing hostility of Christianity toward the Jews has created unusually strong feelings of solidarity among them. the need to struggle against general animosity and even the impossibility of communicating freely with the rest of the population" results in compact and cohesive individual Jewish societies with very strong feelings of their own identity and unity. So instead of the expected higher suicide rate among Jews because of the constant social and economic pressure they were under from the state and their neighbors, there was a much lower rate due, according to Durkheim, at least partly to the ostracism which was responsible for their plight.

One of Durkheim’s stylistic and methodological flaws is argument by elimination--which Durkheim also used brilliantly in "Elementary Forms". It consists of systematic rejection of alternative definitions or explanations of a social fact, in a manner clearly intended to lend credibility to the remaining explanation favored by Durkheim. That the conceptual cards are stacked in his favor was obscured by his theoretical audacity and eloquent prose.

"Suicide" differs from "Elementary Forms" because the subject studied is so specific. Suicide is recognized as a unique human social problem, one that might be ameliorated or affected if its causes are defined both broadly enough (within large sub-groups of a population) and narrowly enough (specific classes of causes for taking one's life). "Elementary Forms" takes breathtaking intuitive leaps backed by evidence that was solid at the time though seen as flawed in later years-- intuitive evidence backed by data. If it were Durkheim's total output he would still be considered a titan in sociology. It was a huge undertaking, examining the nature of god through intense studies of primitive religions to show the social origins of both religion and science.

“Suicide” suffers in comparison to “Elementary Forms” but most social science writing and analysis does as well.

[Xander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897) is arguably Émile Durkheim’s most famous book. After reading it, I can add to this: it’s also his most clearest book. That is, clear in the sense that it exposes Durkheim’s perspective on the then newly founded science sociology. Why? Because Durkheim distinguished himself from contemporary social scientists with his principle of emergence (my own terms). According to Durkheim, society has laws of its own, inexplicable in terms of the psychology of individuals. Around the time, most social scientists saw sociology as mass psychology – understanding the human mind would lead to us understanding how societies function.

Durkheim breaks with this sociology-as-mass-psychology perspective, since he claimed in his two earlier works that sociology is the study of social facts. These social facts emerge out of the interaction of all the individuals in a given society, and the social structure of this particular society (how individuals relate to each other). Explanation consists of the causal relationship between multiple social facts; social facts can only be explained in terms of other social facts, not in terms of individual manifestations of these social facts.

This sounds a lot like the claim of medieval theologians that universals (abstractions of particulars) have an existence of their own. Where and in what these universals consist of would never be explained. Colleagues of Durkheim, predictably, called him a medieval metaphysician, since the resemblance between his social facts and the medial universals is clear. Why were they wrong to label Durkheim in this way? Well, in a science, all of science is founded on emergence – you can’t explain chemical processes purely in terms of atoms, just like you can’t explain human psychological functions in terms of biology. Ultimately, each science works with its own building blocks and its own laws.

(Although not all scientists and philosophers of science agree with this. Reductionism – the golden ideal of reducing a given science fully into terms of a more fundamental science – has its proponents. Some of the most renowned physicists and biologists are reductionists; and reductionism has done much good for science.)

In Suicide, Durkheim is able to fully explain his sociological perspective using the example of suicide. Suicide, he notes in book 1, has always been explained in terms of the individual. The suicide is deemed to be a lunatic, an alcoholic, a melancholy/depressed person – and is studied by the psychologist. And if not, other circumstantial factors are considered, such as climatic conditions (heat would arouse the passions); celestial movements (seasonal effects); racial or genetic vulnerabilities; etc. Durkheim uses suicide statistics to show that none of these causes holds true. The only thing he finds is that suicide rates vary with the seasons, increasing towards the summer and decreasing towards December. But, he sees the increase of social activity as the underlying cause. Why this is so, he explains in book 2.

The second book of Suicide is dedicated to understand suicide as a social fact. Individual and environmental factors are now ruled out, so Durkheim starts to study suicide on the level of society. By studying the changes in the rates of suicide in different European countries in relation to different social facts, he is able to distinguish three types of suicide – each with its own social cause and its own peculiar vulnerable group of persons.

The first type Durkheim mentions is ‘egoistic suicide’. This type of suicide is due to the individualization of society. As collectivism decreased (in which personal identity doesn’t exist) and the ‘religion of the individual’ started to spread, the focus of people turned onto themselves. Certain groups of people, like artists and intellectuals, have such developed intellects, that their minds are almost completely cut off from the social world. In ultimo, these people only have an ‘ego’ and no social relations. This group of people is heavily susceptible to suicide due to melancholy and nihilistic feelings.

The second type of suicide is ‘altruistic suicide’. This is suicide in which an individual kills himself because he doesn’t recognize his own personality – all that exists is the social group. This mind-set is typical of collectivistic societies (primitive societies in which group survival has to be secured), but it is also highly cultivated in armies. Somewhat counter-intuitively, this ‘altruism’ increases with ones status in the army – the higher you are up the chain, and the longer you have been part of the army, the more you have discarded your own ‘ego’ and the more important the honour of the flag becomes. Durkheim proves his point by showing that ‘time served in the army’ and ‘rank’ both correlate positively with suicide rates.

The last type of suicide Durkheim finds, he labels ‘anomic suicide’. Anomy, according to Durkheim, is sudden de-regulation – the sudden falling away of rules and laws on which one based his or her life. Modern western societies, due to industrialization, globalism and capitalism have become highly differentiated and also highly volatile. Business and exchange cycles are continuously fluctuating between booms and busts. Economic crises break out (on average) each seven years and are followed by both sudden bankruptcies and sudden profits. Each time a crisis hits, people fall down or climb the social ladder – this leads to anomy: suddenly one finds oneself in a new social group, to which one isn’t socialized and in which one hardly finds acceptance. Durkheim shows the cogency of his thesis by establishing the increasing suicide rates after each political or economic event – the interesting thing to note here is that change is the driving factor, not the positivity/negativity of the change. Whether a war is won or lost, the nation’s suicide rate will increase.

But this is not all. If anomy – the sudden loss of regularity and discipline – is a social force driving suicide rates up, then it would follow that divorce would also impact suicide rates. And this is what Durkheim manages to establish using statistics. While the suicide rate tends to be higher for unmarried people, after a divorce the suicide rate for men tends to skyrocket. For women it is the opposite: marriage increases suicide rates for women, while divorce lowers it.
This part of book 2 contains Durkheim’s most contested and controversial claims. Many feminists, and academics in general, nowadays claim this is sexist science. To be fair, let’s quote Durkheim’s explanation: men are more influenced by the activity around them (requiring the discipline of marriage), while women are more influenced by their own passions (requiring the freedom of unmarried life). But facts don’t care about feelings. Modern day psychology has established that men tend to benefit more from being in a relationship (and suffer more from bachelorhood) – e.g. the impact of relationship status on mental health is much bigger for men. Also, on average, men are much more socially active (including aggressive and competitive) while women are much more emotion-driven. The suicide rates for depressed men is tremendously higher than for women, while both suffer equally from depression – there’s definitely an activity/aggression factor involved here. Same goes for criminality, etc.

Anyway, in the last book (3) of Suicide, Durkheim tries to explain the nature of suicide as a social fact. The general message is: due to the inductive method, we now have three types of suicide, which have to be analysed as social phenomena in their own terms. Each society has a different mix of egoism, altruism and anomy, and thus each society has its own characteristic suicidogenic potential. Suicide rates thus tend to vary between nations and different social changes lead to different types of suicide rates rising or falling. Individual factors are irrelevant from the social perspective – whether the suicide was an alcoholic, melancholic, a criminal or whatever is not important.

This, by the way, leads to the philosophical debate of free will vs. determinism. Durkheim rightly states that statistical facts do not determine individual cases. Of course, he didn’t have the statistical tools we nowadays have, but still he manages to explain why (for example) the average length is a social fact sui generis and how this doesn’t determine the length of any individual in a given society. And with this rebuttal, Durkheim also has silenced his colleagues who called him a medieval metaphysician: social facts exist sui generis, we can observe, measure and analyse them, and there’s nothing metaphysical about this.

The last two chapters Durkheim spends on the question of the immorality of suicide and how we can decrease the suicide rates in the European nations. First, suicide is a normal social phenomenon, just like crime is a normal social phenomenon. This led to much controversy at the time, because – just like today – people moralize scientific statements. Human nature is flawed so crime will always exist; just like penal laws and punishments will always exist. Punishment is a means of restoring social contract and strengthening the bonds between the members of society. And in the same vein, suicide will always exist.

But is it immoral? Durkheim says it is. But not on grounds that religious and collectivist adepts have claimed throughout history (for example, life is God’s gift so suicide is a sin). In modern societies we have sanctified the individual; we deem the individual human being to be worth something (a lot). Any suicide offends this principle and hence acts immoral. It’s interesting to note here that Durkheim acknowledges that the principle itself (a human life is worth much) can’t be defended – it is unfounded – yet a member of a modern western society has to accept it as a useful fiction to function properly.

So, suicide is normal yet immoral. Yet, the nineteenth century showed gigantic increases (in some countries some hundredfold) in suicide rates. These huge increases are, according to Durkheim, symptomatic of a sick social organism. Something has changed recently which makes thousands of people give up their own lives. It can’t be altruism, since collectivism has been almost fully eradicated (even in the army).

For Durkheim, both egoism and anomy have increased a lot with the new social structure and are the main causes of the huge rises in suicide rates all over Europe. Individuation has been speeding up with new means of communication and transport, while capitalism and industrialization has drawn millions of Europeans to cities and destroyed all forms of associations, save for the nation-state. In fact, the State is the only remaining institution that connects all individuals, and while its centralization has sped up since the French Revolution (which build on the centralized Ancien Régime) it has become less and less effective. Decentralization is no alternative, since decentralized government still doesn’t associate individuals in a meaningful way (especially when forced from above due to reasons of efficiency).

Durkheim claims that religion, politics and the state are no remedies to the extreme individuation and loss of meaning. These institutions all had their time and place, but one cannot throw mankind back into ‘unknowing’ – e.g. religion without the belief in an active God is ineffective. In theory, education might be an option in but, in practice, it relies on the current generation – which is already individuated to a high degree – to turn the tide. For Durkheim, the only viable alternative is the creation of new, intermediate (between state and individual) social institutions that bind people together. He claims corporations formed around professions are a good bulwark against individuation and hence suicide. When people associate around the one meaningful thing left to them – their profession – and try to improve their lot together and within a hierarchical structure, order and purpose is restored, up to a point. Durkheim is pessimistic about the viability of this option, though, since he recognizes this would require both the toleration of the state and its business elites as well as the will of the people themselves.

At the end of the book, he even claims the family as a social unit is the only real factor left that could increase social cohesion and hence decrease the rates of egoistic and anomic suicides. But this seems to be problematic as well. When it comes to marriage, there’s a huge zero-sum game involved. Women’s rights (divorce) had been developing in Europe for some time, leading to increased suicide rates of men. But reversing this trend would lead to increasing suicide rates of women. Marriage, then, seems to be a saviour for men and a killer for women. Should society sacrifice the one sex for the other?

So, like Plato, Durkheim ends his book in an aporia, in which much delusion is cleared up but we’re not much nearer to a solution. But this analogy is a bit unfair; Plato wrote for the sake of dialectic, while Durkheim wrote to put his sociology into practice. While his data set was flawed and his statistical tools very limited, when it came to deducing arguments and deriving effective hypotheses, Suicide truly is a landmark treatise.

For me, the most important lessons are:

1. Society has its own free floating rationale, which developed over time and which is almost immune to individual influence. So, when it comes to such social facts as crime and suicide, we have individual emotions and opinions, while society as a whole has its own opinions. These two coexist and are bound to be confounded when individuals are confronted with social events (e.g. we feel enrages when a crime befalls a loved one, while society is much more nuanced, and we subsequently feel that punishment is much too weak.)

2. We tend to think that we, as individuals, are free to do and feel as we wish, but there are developments and influences on a more abstract level that guide and predispose us in certain ways. Durkheim mentions the pessimistic philosophies of Schopenhauer and Hartmann as sign of the times – a moody, depressed and dreary society is characterized pessimistic and nihilistic emotions. It is hard to escape this social mood as an individual. (Durkheim also mentions that only in a collapsing Athenian city-state/Greece could the stoicism of a Zeno or the nihilism of an Epicurus take hold of society.)

3. While thinking of society as an organism is a flawed analogy, it also offers us a new pair of glasses through which to view our own society and observe new phenomena. Ultimately, I am a sceptic when it comes to societies existing as entities and following certain laws or paths (whether cyclical, ascending or descending). But after reading Durkheim’s Suicide – not to mention his prior two works – I can more fully grasp the meaning in which people like Spengler thought about societies and their developmental paths.

I always associated Durkheim with a pseudo-conservative, but after reading Suicide I can fully attest to his progressive stance on things and his pragmatism in solving social ills. I can see why people would put him in the ‘conservative corner’, with his emphasis on the importance of the family as a social unit, his pessimism about the way modern western society was developing and, especially, his critique on the ‘religion of the individual’. But he also acknowledges clearly that religion, politics and the state are things of the past – at least when it comes to creating meaningful social bonds – and that we have to look for new solutions for new problems. Also, his atheistic stance makes it difficult to place him in the conservative camp.

(This is very similar to the way liberals always seem to use Adam Smith and David Riccardo to strengthen their ideology. Adam Smith offered his free market approach as an alternative to the guilds and the mercantilism of the kingdoms and republics of the eighteenth century, while also warning for the de-humanizing effects of industrialism and free market enterprise – he actually wrote a whole treatise on how human beings sympathize with each other and how this sympathy is a basic human need.)

In short, Durkheim was someone who wanted to understand society based on facts and who wanted to use science and reason to cure some of the ills of modern day western society. Suicide is a beautiful testimony on this.

(p.s. I can fill this review with countless critiques on the quality of his data; on the ways he made use of this flawed data set; and on some of his hasty conclusions; but I think it more fruitful to emphasize the radical shift that sociology took with Durkheim’s approach.)

[Emma Sea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Groundbreaking? Yes.

Important? Yes.

Could I force myself to read the whole thing? No.

DNF at page 167. I didn't even get half way.

[ميساء · Rating 5 out of 5]

الكتاب قيّم، يحاول دركهايم الوصول الى تلابيب المجتمع وتأثيراته الايجابية على الانسان الفرد من خلال تفسيره لمعطيات ظاهرة الانتحار. كما قال أحد المعلّقين أنه لربما بالغ الكاتب بالاستخفاف بالأسباب النفسية أو بعض الظروف المحيطة على ارادة المرء للانتحار، لكنه قد احسن ذلك عن طريق استجلاب الاحصائيات التي تثبث نوعا ما صحة ما يقول.

صنّف الكاتب الانتحار الى ثلاثة أنواع: 1) الأناني وهو الذي يفقد فيه المرء أي صلة بالمجتمع وأي ركيزة فيما يحيطه ليقف عليها، وينغمس في ذاته الى درجة تصبح فيها هي الغاية. هذه الصلات هي ثلاث رئيسية: المجموعةى\الجماعة الدينية، الجماعة العائلية، الجماعة السياسية 2) الانتحار الغيري وهو الذي على العكس من الأول يفقد فيه المرء أي احساس بذاته ويعتبر وجوده مرتهنا للمحيط والغير. وفي هذا الانتحار هناك عدة تصنيفات منها الانتحار الغيري الالزامي الذي يكون فيه المرء ملزما على الانتحار والا عرّض نفسه للعار، ومنها الجماعية كما كان هذا ضمن طقوس ومعتقدات ما سمّاه الكاتب بالمجتمعات البدائية منها في الهند واليابان. وهناك الانتحار الغيري غير الالزامي ومنه ما قد نعتبره في درجة منه ب"الانتحار البطولي" أو "الاستشهاد" 3) الفوضوي وهو الذي ينتحر فيه المرء نتيجة لتعرضه لفوضى الخيارات اللانهائية في حياته ولا محدوديتها.

عرض الكاتب كيف حاولت بعض المجتمعات عبر التاريخ محاربة الانتحار، وكيف أن منها طبّق العقوبات على من يمارسه، لكنّه يعتقد أن الانتحار في المجتمع المتمدّن لا يمكن محاربته بمثل هذه العقوبات وعليه يقترح ابتكار جماعات\مجموعات كالحرفية تلعب دورا كانت قد لعبته جماعات\مجموعات سابقا لم يعد لها الآن وجود أو تأثير كبير (الدينية\العائلية)على حدّ تعبيره.

والمزيد..
على هامش الكتاب دوّنت ما يلي:
http://en3ash.blogspot.de/2013/09/blo...

[Zarko_Nanashi · Rating 5 out of 5]

La mera neta no fue buena idea empezar a leer esto xd me esta deprimiendo ver los numeros que habia hace 150 años, actualmente las cifras estan más feas y la verdad si esta algo fuerte la lectura, sin emabrgo, hace reflexionar entorno a la problematica social que es el suicidio. Como no debe de ser visto como una enfermedad individual, sino al contrario, al igual que el uso de drogas, es un problema de salud Publica.

Bueno acabado de leer este libro (Tiene ya como dos semanas que termine) las cifras se vuelven eso, cifras, y la manera en que sontratadas por Durkheim son demasiado asensibles. Se les analisa como dato y quizas en sociología eso es lo que se tenga que hacer.

La obra me parece un camino muy aventurado a numeros que no son para cualquier estomago, datos que de igual manera te hacen pensar en la soledad, los problemas de vivir en sociedad, la culpa, el daño que se le causa a otros por el mero hecho de estar exsitiendo.

Es un libro dificil de leer, trabajoso pero que vale la pena. Es bastanta agradable la forma en que clasifica una cuestion tan desagradable como el suicidio. Te hace sentirlo más humano.

Conclusion. No lo lean estando tristes.

[Buck · Rating 1 out of 5]

positivist sociology is an abyss of statistical correlational mania, the reification of said regularities into prescriptions about "normality", and a justification for present state of social control and repression. A seeming taking for granted of the present state of things.

this book is rife with all of this

[Rudy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While reading, I kept noticing how I deemed most of the research being presented as “common sense.” Then I remembered, this is history. This is the book that changed the field of sociology forever.

Before Durkheim’s On Suicide, suicide was studied as a psychological phenomenon by psychologists and psychiatrists. Because of this, most of their data was collected from mentally ill patients and deemed suicide a mental illness. This also reminds me how in The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, she mentions how Freud’s female patients were all of upper class European housewives, which led to faulty assumptions of all women from his few subjects and how this trickled down to be taught and venerated by American professors. Because of this, I learned to question all research and their samples. Durkheim took it upon himself to investigate the trends of suicide and study its social aetiology.

With the sociological lens, he discovers that social causes play more of a role than psychological ones, especially noting how suicide is not genetic, contagious under the appropriate social conditions, not related to cosmic factors, and is not necessarily a mental illness. He finds that really high or low integration in society can lead to altruistic or egoistic suicide, respectively. He finds that being ingrained in society whether by religion, politics, or family has an inverse relationship with suicide, as supported by the myriad of data provided in his book.

Despite being almost 150 years old, this historical book is still extremely relevant to the field of sociology, despite its focus on a few European countries and years. Durkheim completely changed research in the field of sociology and readers can apply his methods and knowledge to modern day research. When performing sociological research, you will pretty much always have to cite Durkheim in your sources —as said by a Yale professor. This goes to show how monumental this book was for its time and how relevant it still is today. It completely changed the face of sociological research forever.

4.5/5

[Jimmy J. Crantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than a hundred years after it was written, it still challenges common views on suicide, makes surprising conclusions and uses interesting historical comparisons. Some the conclusions are today easily refuted (such as the conclusions of why women have less to gain by the marriage), but to me that is just to be expected. Well worth the read for those interested in sociology and psychology.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

(7/10) Going in I expected reading Durkheim in the 21rst century to be a purely historic endeavour, examining up close the beginnings of the social sciences but not really learning anything. And there's a large chunk of the book that's like that, including uncomfortable sections about "lower races" and the natural inclinations of women. But there's also a lot in here that spoke to questions I'd been considering later, about the intersection of the individual and society and the difficulty of trying to balance the two. Durkheim's thesis is that suicide occurs when there isn't a proper balance between these two elements, and the individual is either entirely cut off from society or completely absorbed by it. What's interesting is that the idea of suicide he debunks -- as a form of individual madness unconnected with social pressures -- is still the prevalent one today. I think this shows how the rise of psychiatry, for all the good its done, has created an idea of individualism that ultimately steers people away from questioning society or even being aware of it.

A lot of Durkheim's writing is very dry and factual, and there are some interminable parts that consist of listing 120-year-old statistics for various provinces of France. This is certainly not one of those classic books that everyone should try to get through, but it certainly surpassed my expectations and made me think in some really interesting ways.

[Cristal Library · Rating 3 out of 5]

A girl in my class said this and I quote "I'm pretty sure Émile Durkheim never imagined his book on suicide would make so many psychology students want to die" and that's pretty much my take on it.
Jokes aside, this book it's actually very interesting, the fact that we were depressed was not Durkheim's fault, just my professor's. I had to write a paper on it in not very much time so I didn't savor it quite well, yet even thougth this is the original study so it takes a LOT of explanation to get to the point being made, once you get there it's so amazing to analyse suicide from that many angles.

[Tienlyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Durkheim remains my favorite social theorist (unless you include Foucault in that genre, which some do). The concept of Anomie can be attributed to several other social constructs in our little world. I've read this book twice, I'll probably read it again in a few years.

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read it.

Certified hood classic.

[Liam O'Leary · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I remain generally suspicious of sociology as an academic discipline, what Durkheim attempts to do here is impressive.

There are lines of inference I disagree with, and some which are contextually outdated (related to marriage), but in the whole these interpretations still seem relevant.

Although it is readable for laypeople I would only recommend this for people with an academic/professional interest in general statistical trends for suicide. The explanation of the statistics, and those on how to rectify them in modern day standings, are lacking. I find it depressing that society seems to have gone in the opposite direction to the two suggestions Durkheim makes to reduce suicide, and the stats have since risen. The question remains: who is culpable?

****
[My Notes for future reference]
-Divorce trumps insanity, alcohohlism, economic status, race, climate, religion as variables for suicide.
-Widowers more often have lower rates than never married.
-Marriage often protects man, fatherhood often protects even more, motherhood often harms more than unmarried but to a lesser extent than any marital difference in man. A cynical idea is raised that where marriage/parenthood protects one gender it harms the other, and vice-versa.
-Seasonal variations (Summer stats always higher) and Christian denomination (Catholics almost always lower) are only nonmarital factors which seemed potential correlates.

-Durkheim suggests suicide is a constituent of society that cannot be eradicated, but when reduced, leads to a rise in homicide.

Egoistic=apathy+excessive individuation~disintegration with religious, domestic, political society.

Altruistic=deindividuation/"duty"~religious cult, army. Even then seen as uncommon.

Anomic=Alienation~nihilistic disgust/homicide-suicide tendency

Proposed solution: Strengthen societal control, equalise gender norms for marriage and parenthood so that divorce becomes less common.

[FiveBooks]

Professor David Downes has chosen to discuss Emile Durkheim’s Suicide: A Study in Sociology , on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject -Crime and Punishment, saying that:

“…Durkheim focuses on the ‘non-contractual elements in contract’ – trust, integrity and moral obligations – as the prime source of social cohesion in economic relations. Elementary sociology but ignored by, or unknown to economists, for whom Durkheim should be compulsory reading. Feral bankers are a far greater threat to civil peace than feral children.…

This is a great taproot for modern theories of crime in the anomie tradition, anomie being a state lacking social and moral cohesion. It was Durkheim who, in this book, did most to establish sociology as a subject in its own right, by showing how suicide, that supremely individual act, varied in relation to social pressures. He stressed the pursuit of ‘infinite aspirations’ as generating higher rates of anomic suicide, due to the weakening of moral regulation in the wake of economic boom as well as slump. Suicide also rose as social bonds weakened due to ‘egoism’ – there is a higher suicide rate in Protestant countries than there is in Catholic ones. And, counter-intuitively, the rate falls when social integration strengthens, as in time of war. His theories of crime, deviance and control are intensely relevant today in the midst of financial crisis following the crash of 2008....”

The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/david...

[Sebastián · Rating 4 out of 5]

“No puede estudiarse el suicido mediante la carta de los suicidas”.

Imagínate vivir en un país totalmente convulsionado por crisis políticas, económicas y sociales, donde la sociedad está constantemente enfrentándose entre sí, donde el gobierno es totalmente injusto y violento en todo su accionar, donde la gente no sabe cómo hacer para escapar la angustia y se mata, y vos sacas un libro y lo llamas EL SUICIDIO.

No sólo te conformas con ser un basado, sino que dedicas un tercio del libro a pegarle a la psicología y la biología que quieren explicar los procesos sociales como si fuesen la única verdad posible. Doble basado.

NO ESTANDO CONFORME, desarrollas una de las obras más importantes del pensamiento sociológico clásico para estudiar aquello que tanto nos preocupa y llamamos “lo social”. A ver, hay criticas, las hay muchas e interesantes, pero no dejemos de poner en perspectiva histórica a este libro: una Francia a fines de siglo XIX completamente convulsionada, angustiada, catastrófica y Durkheim está totalmente convencido de fundar una ciencia que hable de los fenómenos sociales para aportar su granito de arena al desastre, es tremendo.

Una lectura más que interesante y funciona como punto de partida para vislumbrar lo que podemos llegar a hacer nosotros los que nos dedicamos a estudiar algo tan amorfo y complejo como es la sociedad.

[Faris Rahmadian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Memahami Bunuh Diri sebagai Refleksi Fakta Sosial.

"At each moment of its history, therefore, each society has a definite aptitude for suicide". [Hal. XI]

Durkheim memulai tulisannya dengan deretan argumen penolakan terhadap tesis tunggal para ilmuan abad ke-19 yang menyatakan bunuh diri sebagai gejala 'penyimpangan' individu. Ia dengan tegas menyatakan bahwa persoalan bunuh diri adalah persoalan interaksi sosial, persoalan kelembagaan dan berbagai dinamika di dalamnya. Ia juga menawarkan gagasan sosiologis ilmiah yang cenderung diabaikan, dan meyakinkan bahwa ilmu pengetahuan sosial dapat bekerja dengan baik dalam ruang positivistik. Dalam buku ini, kita dibawa pada gaya pemahaman ala 'ilmuan alam' yang cukup provokatif. Ia juga berkali-kali menyebutkan tentang fakta sosial (social facts) sebagai kata kunci, atau sebuah konsep abstrak tentang sebuah 'nilai' maupun 'norma' eksternal, namun terinternalisasi dalam tubuh-tubuh individu yang pada akhirnya membentuk pola dan kehidupan masyarakat itu sendiri.

Komponen dalam fakta sosial tersebutlah yang pada akhirnya terkait juga dengan dua aspek 'determinan' terhadap gejala bunuh diri, yakni: social integration dan social regulation. Derajat komposisi dalam keduanya lantas yang menjadi penentu 'jenis' bunuh diri yang Durkheim kembangkan (yang nampaknya masih terlalu sedikit), dan menunjukkan bagaimana bunuh diri di konteks situasi sosial yang berbeda, dapat menunjukkan jenis-jenis yang berbeda. Pada akhirnya, meski penuh dengan puluhan pertanyaan ketika membaca buku ini yang membentang dari relasi kuasa hingga omong kosong determinisme, buku ini adalah sebuah potret masa lalu yang mengegaskan bahwa sosiologi serta variasinya hampir selalu lahir dari kekecewaan terhadap penjelasan-penjelasan deterministik 'ilmu alam' yang melepaskan banyak konteks sosial budaya di sekitarnya.

[stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

the first "real" book on suicide, durkheim was a sociologist who first started looking at suicide in 1897. the result is a landmark text in psychology, and the foundation text for suicidology.

it's really brilliant, tries to quantify suicidology into a science - which is desperately hard, because obviously you can't exactly run experiments on what causes people to kill themselves and what doesn't. (oh, ethical problems!)

the only problem is that it does read like a text - and add the fact that he's an old school sociologist - makes it a little hard to get into. but if you are at all interested in suicide, this is a must read.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the whole Marx, Weber, Durkheim trifecta, these are my favorites to read (and this is about pleasure, not about theoretical or ideological paradigms):

Suicide: a sociological study, by Durkheim, and "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte", by Marx. (Note the absence of any of Weber's works. Groundbreaking he may be, but a gifted writer he is not).

The elegance and apparent simplicity of Durkheim's "Suicide" belies its importance in the history of sociological thought. Would that all social thinkers could be this direct.

[Doc · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provided the foundation for sociology as a separate discipline. Durkheim took a phenomenon that seems on the surface completely psychological -- suicide -- and approached it by studying broader social trends at the group level. The patterns he identified were remarkable.
Social science FTW!

[Maarya Abbasi · Rating 2 out of 5]

meh - a very dense read that is bogged down by baseless racist and patriarchal beliefs. some of the theory still holds up, but overall this is such an overwrought and overrated work. social scientists always kiss this dude's ass but he really doesn't deserve it imo

[Noémie]

Enfin fini !!! En vrai, intéressant mais un peu barbant et répétitif parfois ! Ça donne de bonnes bases par contre pour la socio :)

[S.M.Y Kayseri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book made a specific quote entered my mind, by Albert Camus;

“There is only one really serious philosophical problem,” Camus says, “and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that”

This book might be a little bit outdated, but most of the facts still conformed with the current data my psychiatry handbook in med school. Emile Durkheim was one of the first sociologist who incorporated statistical data in their studies, so it was perhaps a paradigm shift from a purely theoretical field to a robust analytic one.

Durkheim believed that suicide, while always has been thought as an individual phenomenon, it can actually be thought relating to its social factors. The addition of cases in a community should not be viewed as mere collective sum, but a sui generic fact which has its own nature. The frightening pattern of constant and stable rate of suicide over a period of years, compared to the more volatile deaths from general causes, implied a steady suicidal potentiality at a societal level. This in line with the waves of suicides in 19th century Europe following cataclysmic events which involved the whole society, rather than affecting small isolated pockets of people.

The one million question would be: what causes suicide? Intuitively, one might blame the psychopathic dispositions of the person, the heredity or if one is desperate enough, cosmic factors such as the climate. But as we shall show later, these extra-social factors bear no correlation or dose-response relationship with suicide rate, sometimes even in an inverse relationship. Real facts, instead, points us into several real laws that is universal and reproducible anywhere; on the basic level,-involving the person and his immediate environment- man showed higher suicide rate than women in the time of study, as man is the gender that is most acutely affected by changes in the collective atmosphere (a concept unique to Durkheim). And, women while less involved in social pressure, showed a significant increase in suicide rate in Sundays, when it was the day the womenfolk had the peak of maximal weekly social interactions. People usually associated the melancholic winter as the time when suicide peaks, but in reality the opposite occurred. More people actually killed themselves in the summer, especially in the country, as during this period of time, interaction occurred the most. In contrast, the city, who had constant amount of social interaction throughout the year, yielded constant amount of suicides. Suicide actually seemed to follow the tracks of urbanity, as prior to 1876, areas where suicides were concentrated was in Northern Italy. But post conquest of Rome, and the capital moved to the ancient city, the suicide peak actually travelled southwards towards Rome. Here are the sneak peeks showing there is a real correlation between social factors and suicide, which would be shown more later.

So the following sections of the review, would try to compressed the findings from the book. (As my reviews in Goodreads also function as my notes, hence the length). Durkheim embarked in the project by his attempt to rebuke the more intuitive factors thought to cause suicide as mentioned above. After succinctly rejecting the extra-social causes, he proceeded to delineate the etiological forms of suicide, which is social in nature.

EXTRA-SOCIAL CAUSES OF SUICIDE

Rejecting psychopathic state. It would be an almost knee-jerk reflex to blame insanity as one of the causes of suicide. But suicide as an act from specific and voluntary intention, according to Durkheim, is almost impossible among the insane. These are absent in the manic in his multiplicity of shifting thoughts, the obsessive under his thraldom and fixity, the melancholic in the chronicity and lastly the impulsive in the automaticity of his thoughts; all are devoid of real intent to truly die. In short, the suicidal state felt by the insane is devoid of any real or concrete motive, as different as illusions and hallucinations to normal perceptions. By saying this is not at all discounting the fact that the insane really felt the pangs of his state, but to emphasise on its totally unrelatedness to external conditions. From the racial factor, he pointed out that if suicide does indeed rise from insanity, then why would the Jews with a higher number of the insane has one of the lowest rate for suicide?

He identified 4 great “races” of Europe; Germanic, Celto-Romans, Slavs and Ural-Altaic, and the rate of suicide corresponds decreasingly with the list. And he shown that differences exists in the same race that lived in different countries. And so Slavs, who has the lowest suicide rate, remained low in Dalmatia and Croatia, but very high in the German states, such as in Bohemia and Moravia.

People usually speculates that suicide would be at its peak in the darker and colder season that will surely sparked melancholia; but the total reverse actually happened. Suicide peaks at the most brightest and mildest season; people actually choose the season with least difficulty to die. The closest data in supporting the seasonal data, would be the pattern that as the day lengthens, the rate of suicides increase greatly. What would explain this pattern? And this is also reinforced by the fact that 3/5 of the suicide happened in daytime, and peaked at the strongest heat; which is a time of maximum social interactions.

THE SOCIAL CAUSES OF SUICIDES

Egoistic suicide

1. Fully Catholic European countries such as Italy, Portugal and Spain has much lower suicide rate than Protestant ones.
2. Even within the same country with different confessionals, Catholics killed themselves less than the Protestants. In Bavaria, a Catholic majority country, provinces with minority Catholics has 70 cases per million, while majority Catholics has 35 cases.
4. England, with a more integrated form of Protestantism with its clerical hierarchy have the lowest suicide rate among Protestant countries.

The important differences between the two confessionals are the levels of individualism. Catholics lay claim to the conscience of its adherents, while the reformed church quite literally put the Bible onto their hands and no set of interpretation imposed upon them. The Church is the locus of the Catholics while the individual and reason to the Protestant. the Protestant has a special love for his liberty, and thus overthrew his traditional beliefs. As the freed people from bondage would not return back to the new life with even more shackles, the newly emerged Protestantism has less set of beliefs and commitments to its adherents. And this ironically weaken the bonds between its constituents, as the very same prior commitments install a sense of unity and camaraderie between them. And this thesis is confirmed by the patterns shown in Jewish community because they have the same theological pervasiveness and social solidarity. And fact no. 5 above confirmed that it was the level of societal integration that played the role.

Another aspect that is related to societal integration would be marriage. Facts were as follows:

1. Married life cuts suicide rate by at least half compared to the unmarried.
2. Widowhood showed increased suicide rate than the married but still less than the unmarried.
3. Husbands with children has coefficient of preservation (against the control) of 2.9, the childless 1.5.
4. Widowers with children killed themselves less than the childless.
5. Coefficient of preservation in married women is very minimal; even negative in some countries.

As marriage could be taken as a mark of proper societal integration, it showed that both marriage and having children are actually protective against suicide. Not all political upheavals causes increase of suicide, so again this exemption is apparent, and it confirms the law. A cohesive and animated society permits exchange of sentiments from one to another, leading him to share and enjoy the collective energy to recharge him from his everyday suffering.

Altruistic suicide. But suicide can also happen in settings where integration is excessive, complete and even held of paramount value. This is what he dubbed the altruistic suicide; rife in military life or political insurgency or in the practices of ancient societies. One can always glance towards the Kamikaze to gain an understanding regarding the altruistic suicide. The varieties of altruistic suicides could be categorised into obligatory (in the case of old men in barbaric societies forced to kill themselves, or the ancient suicide of wives following the death of the husband), optional (where prestige is added to suicide in order to counterbalance shame or dispute, in the case of seppuku among the Japanese), and acute (in the case of suicide by monks and religious zealots).

The mechanics behind altruistic suicide would be complete abolishment of the individual into the social resulting into the preservation of the whole trumps those of the individual. It is likened to us amputating the gangrenous limb in favour to save the patient’s life, the value of individual cells and the locomotive function of the lower limbs shrunken under the necessity of the whole. Impersonality is the key; the leg became a mere extension, a danger even towards the preservation of the life. Data showed that:

1. Rate of suicide is significantly higher in armies, than in general population.
2. Not associated with disgust with the service: rate of suicide actually increases with years of service. If the former is the case: the trend should be maximal in the first few years and tapered down after that.
3. Provinces with low civilian suicide rates has higher military suicide, as in Austria. This shows that the civilian cause of suicide (egoistic) is in inverse relationship with the military (altruistic)

Anomic suicide. The mechanism behind this is a bit subtle. Men differs from animals in terms that his needs is not only physical, but beyond that. Animals could be satisfied with the filling of their void, but men are left with an increasing abyss over the course of history. As it is part of our nature, the legislature regarding the limit of our desire cannot be depended on the individual; it would be unlimited if this is the case. Being unlimited, it would again and again would surpass the means available, which would inevitably produce morbid effects. How can one reconcile the void between his Faustian needs and the means he can acquire? This contradiction would give raise to a state of perplexity. As Durkheim pointed out, one cannot advance when one walks toward no goal, or toward infinity. One is then trapped in the limbo of Zeno paradox; there is no real motion, except real torment. Thus, it is clear to us our desires and wants must be limited. But as it is a priori unlimited for the individual, there must be an external regulative principle.

Other example would be the suicide of widowhood, which essentially a limbo after the absence of regulative function of marriage. The rate of suicide and divorces occurred in an almost universal direct relationship. But in the modern state, the individual lost this sense of camaraderie with his own community, and he is essentially thrown into a vast ocean without a four-sided solid boundaries called a raft. A distinct example would be the marriage, while for some it provided a stifling environment, but the individual constraints is only secondary, not the primary essence or function of the marriage. Yes, marriage could be seen as a set of boundaries or restraints, but it is also regulative. It provide a certain kind of order, ironically through its rigid don’t while providing a unique and privileged bounty to those who entered the covenant. The laxity on the laws of divorce wrenched the regulative function of marriage life, throwing the divorcee into anomy. The regulative function of marriage, unfortunately most of the time shined the most in hindsight of a divorce, as it has been shown that divorced men has a higher suicide rate owing simply to the fact that men benefit more from the regulative influence of marriage. The unmarried man, on the other hand, aspires to everything and is satisfied with nothing. The establishment of divorce weaken the restraints of desire, because it is easily broken.

Thus Durkheim made it clear that each society has its own level of suicidal pressure consisting of a fixed levels of egoism, altruism and anomy. It could only be through this pervasive societal pressure which can explain the stability and constant numbers of suicide across time and nations.

[happianooshik · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first monograph I read focussed on the ambiguous topic of suicide. Emil Durkheim statistically analyses suicide data among different races, religions, segments of society and so on, of course, from the point of view of sociology. He emphasised three main types of suicide: selfish, altruistic and anomalous. The first one is generally clear, but what about the other two? Anomalous suicide occurs as a result of a deep crisis of society, for example, during a revolution or rebellion. Altruistic suicide is a kind of act of self-denial, such a person, unlike a selfish person (who sees no meaning in life), sees meaning outside life itself.

Some facts about suicide that I remember:

1. Women are less prone to suicide than men;

2. The main cause of suicide is discord with society and loneliness;

3. People living in temperate places (not too hot summers, not too cold winters) are less prone to suicide;

4. The largest number of suicides occurs in the summer;

4. The higher the prone to suicide, the higher the social class of a person;

5. In the army, the prone to suicide is higher the higher the human rank;

6. Marriage protects against suicide, especially if there are children;

7. Religion protects against suicide, but not so much by prohibition as by depriving a person of mental freedom (for example, suicide among Catholics is much less than among Protestants);

8. The voluntary choice of an unattainable goal contributes to suicide.

9. The tendency to suicide is especially evident in youth and subsides by old age.

The author does not consider suicides before the age of 16, believing that they simply do not exist. It is possible that suicide among minors in the 19th century was indeed insignificant, but today the situation is the opposite. By the way, it is Russia that ranks first in the world in terms of the number of juvenile suicides.

The same goes for suicides due to imitation - nowadays this type of suicide has changed somewhat. Thus, especially devoted fans of self-killer celebrities commit suicide in the same way, Kurt Cobain is the perfect example.

Sadly, compared to the 19th century, in our time suicides have become even more frequent, new ways and species have appeared, old ones have changed. The author believes that the increase in suicide is an inevitable payment for the development of civilisation and progress. It is necessary to contribute to the reduction of suicide by uniting society, because it is the person who is distant from the collective consciousness who has the highest inclination.

The idea of suicide was a natural continuation of my reasoning. (L.N. Tolstoy)

There are two types of people, those who have thought about suicide at least once and those who do not see the point in it, living cheerfully and at ease. A book by a sociologist that gives an opportunity to look at suicide not only because of psychological problems, but also because of social problems. Durkheim undertakes to argue that the main cause of suicide is loneliness, not new, you will agree. The author also provides the reader with an interesting theory that there are no psychological reasons for suicide.

If people kill themselves more often than before, not because we have to make heavier efforts to maintain our existence, and not because our legitimate needs are less met, but because we now know neither where our legitimate needs stop or what goal our activities have.

[Chrissy Lapointe · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up

[Neptune · Rating 4 out of 5]

Multumesc Durkheim acuma nu ma mai sinucid