Anomie’s Eastern Origins: The Buddha’s Indirect Influence on Durkheim’s Understanding of Desire and Suffering

• In Event: 352 - Theory Section Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Durkheim

Abstract

Durkheim’s claim in Suicide that humanity’s “inextinguishable thirst” (soif inextinguible) causes suffering was adopted from Arthur Schopenhauer’s argument that the will-to-live’s “unquenchable thirst” (unlöschbaren Durst) causes suffering, which was previously adopted from the Buddha’s argument that “ceaselessly recurring thirst” (trishna) causes suffering. I retrace this demonstrable though seemingly unlikely history of ideas and reveal that the philosophical underpinnings of Durkheim’s theory of anomie are rooted, through Schopenhauer—whose thought influenced many thinkers during the neo-Romantic fin de siècle period, including Durkheim—, in the Buddha’s second noble truth—a doctrine made available to Schopenhauer in European translations of Buddhist texts during the previous turn of the century’s “Oriental Renaissance.” Along with its contributions to sociological theory and the history of sociology by attaining a more thorough understanding of Durkheimian anomie and its intellectual origins, this project opens up important questions for the sociology of knowledge.

Author

• Ryan Gunderson, Miami University