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In ‘The Elementary Forms of Religious life,’ Durkheim argued that all societies divide the world into two categories: sacred and profane. Religion is based upon this division: it is a unified system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things – things set apart and forbidden.
In his work “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life”, sociologist Durkheim proposed a theory of religion based on the sacred, which transcends ordinary life, and the profane, referring to mundane routines.
Émile Durkheim believed that society is underpinned by the religious principle that some things are “sacred” and some things are “profane.” The sacred is anything that we set apart from ...
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), the first modern sociologist, introduced the concept of the sacred and profane worlds in his seminal work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).
Émile Durkheim’s positive definition of religion offers a powerful framework for understanding the role religion plays in social cohesion and identity formation. By distinguishing between the sacred and the profane, Durkheim reveals the underlying mechanisms that can unite individuals into a cohesive moral community.
Durkheim contrasts the sacred with the notion of profane, or that which desecrates the sacred and from which the sacred must be protected, making the opposition between sacred and profane a central element of Durkheim’s theory.
The sacred–profane dichotomy is a concept posited by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1912, who considered it to be the central characteristic of religion: "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden."
Emile Durkheim’s distinction between the sacred and profane remains a fundamental concept in the sociology of religion. It provides a lens through which we can understand the power of collective beliefs and their role in shaping society.
Durkheim and the sacred enter into this polemic in two places. First, the human universality of the sacred and its practices give it a respectability from the evolutionary perspective that it did not have in latter-day versions of the SSSM.
In fact, however, the distinction between sacred and profane, and the critical review of the anthropology of religion that occupy Book I are essential to Durkheim's epistemological argument. The first dualism, sacred versus profane, turns out also to be the first classification.