Durkheim y Tocqueville: dos visiones sobre el papel de la Religión en el mundo moderno

Abstract

The reflections concerning the relation between religion and society follow a line of thought that goes of San Agustín to Rousseau passing for Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Durkheim places inside this tradition in that current of thought that goes from Rousseau up to Saint-Simon and Comte, for that the religion must be replaced in the modern societies by a rational and immanent morality. Tocqueville will integrate, on the contrary, tradition and modernity to grant a great role more emphasized to the religion in the modern societies. Durkheim was firmly sure of the possibility of constructing a moral purely reflexive and rational order from the same activities that they were constructing the society. Tocqueville will believe, nevertheless, that the above mentioned morality would have to rest in other principles that were overcoming the contingency of those social functions, granting a firm belief to the men in his own moral values. In his opinion the religion and the tradition were called to play an important role in this respect. Durkheim will think, nevertheless, that these realities would have to be overcome for being in contradiction with the values and the principles that the modern societies were articulating. In the article that later we sense beforehand we propose to resist both points of view, with the intention of thinking about the consequences that there has for the societies of the last modernity the transformation of those social areas that had been a support of different moral values.