individual but come from a moral power above him, that which the mystic calls God or which can be more scientifically conceived. The same law is found at work in the two fields.

Later, speaking of the mysterious actions that produce both individual and collective representations, Durkheim concedes that “It is for metaphysics to find the concepts which will render this heterogeneity in an acceptable form.” Durkheim names this indefinable property of individual representations “spirituality,” and the larger property of collective representations “hyperspirituality.” In his last word on the subject of spirituality, Durkheim concludes unhelpfully, “Despite its metaphysical appearance, this word designates nothing more than a body of natural facts which are explained by natural causes.”

“The Determination of Moral Facts” identifies obligation and desirability as the two essential characteristics of moral acts, which history reveals are never identified with individuals acting in their own interest but instead are always devoted to the good of society, “with the condition that society be always considered as being qualitatively different from the individual beings that compose it.” Moral rules differ from others in that they are synthetic, not analytic. That is, getting sick from violating commonsense rules of hygiene is understood by analyzing the behavior involved: The punishment is inherent in the violation. However, no consequence is necessarily entailed by violation of a moral rule; the blame—the “sanction,” as Durkheim calls it—is synthetic in that it accrues from violating a preestablished rule. Sanctions can also proceed from conformity to moral rules, in which case the consequences are favorable. In all instances, the sanctions derive not from the act itself but from the violation or the observance of the preestablished rules, none of which are absolute in all places for all times but are constructed by each society in keeping with its own needs.

These rules are related to sacredness, which also implies obligations, or duty, and a desire to seek the good for its own sake. Neither duty nor desirability has priority over the other, and neither can be derived from the other. The obligatory nature of moral rules derives from their moral authority, and Durkheim stresses the parallels between the moral and the sacred with the apparent intention of rooting the moral in the religious. Morality and religion have always been closely associated. Thus, “there must, then, be morality in religion and elements of the religious in morality.”

Just as collective representations are more than the sum of individual representations, collective morality is more than the sum of the morals of individuals: “We arrive then at the conclusion that if a morality, or system of obligations and duties, exists, society is a moral being qualitatively different from the individuals it comprises and from the aggregation from which it derives.” Durkheim notes how similar this argument is to Kant’s argument for the existence of God. Kant said that morality was unintelligible without God; Durkheim fixes morality in society because “otherwise morality has no object and society no roots.” Durkheim professes to be indifferent to the question of which is the source of morality, God or society: “I see in the Divinity only society transfigured and symbolically expressed.”

However, the individual’s role in moral activity must not be overlooked, for although society “transcends” the individual, it is also “immanent” in each person. Society’s moral force produces civilization, “the assembly of all the things to which we attach the highest price,” and everyone is human only to the extent that we share the “ideas, beliefs, and precepts” of our civilization. This “sui generis force” that we all “shelter under” is “an intelligent and moral force capable, consequently, of neutralizing the blind and amoral forces of nature.” However, there is no universal moral force governing all societies, for each society has its own appropriate morality, and any other would be “fatal.” Moreover, each society has its ideal type of individual whom all members “realize is the keystone of the whole social system and gives it its unity.”

“The Determination of Moral Facts” was originally presented as a seminar, and appended to it are several of Durkheim’s most cogent answers to questions raised by his listeners. For example, he judges it impossible that morality and religion will ever be separated but explains his own position. He will not accept the utilitarians’ view of morality as merely a useful set of guidelines but neither will he go along with the theologians in hypostatizing a “transcendent Being.” Instead, he will frame the source of morality in rational language that remains faithful to its nature. To another questioner, he insists on the moral authority of the collective, and he compares people’s awe in the face of the collective’s moral authority to the awe felt by believers on their knees before their God. One must respect society even with its “pettiness,” he says, concluding with a remark that gives a new slant to most theodicies: “If we were only able to love and respect that which is ideally perfect, supposing the word to have any definite meaning, God Himself could not be the object of such a feeling, since the world derives from Him and the world is full of imperfection and ugliness.” Sort of a corollary to this observation is the point that each person is immoral to a degree because nobody can perfectly embody the “communal moral conscience.”

Durkheim makes a simple distinction in “Value Judgments and Judgments of Reality.” Judgments are simple statements of preference that describe the state of the subject (for example, “I like hunting”), whereas judgments of value attribute worth to something and correspond to some objective reality. These objective values derive not from “a mean type found in the majority of individuals” in a given society because the average person is mediocre, but from the effect an object has on the collective subject, society. The moral authority of society constrains individuals in their judgments and even “ridicules those whose aesthetic inspiration is different,” making society both a legislator and a “creator and guardian” of civilization’s goods.

Value resides not in the thing, Durkheim says, but in the relationship between things and ideals. These ideals, though, are not transcendent and universal but specific to different societies, arising from each culture’s respect for human dignity. Durkheim emphasizes that whereas there are different types of value, they are all, including the economic, “species of the same genus.” Finally, Durkheim arrives at the relationship between value judgments and judgments of reality, asserting that because ideals are themselves real, though of a “different order,” the two kinds of judgments do not differ “in nature.” This reasoning brings Durkheim to the point he was working toward all along: The “injustice” of the accusation that sociology has “a fetish for fact and a systematic indifference to the ideal.”