Montesquieu and Rousseau: Forerunners of Sociology

By Émile Durkheim

Book Overview

Montesquieu & Rousseau provides, for the first time in English, two essays by Emile Durkheim on his chief eighteenth-century predecessors in the main stream of Western thought.Durkheim recognized that Montesquieu had laid down the principles of sociology long before that young science had a name and that Rousseau, too, spoke as a sociologist in The Social Contract. With his characteristic blend of reason and fervor, he enlarged upon these forerunners to create the fundamental ideas of modern sociology.The essays are valuable for what they tell us of Montesquieu and Rousseau. They are doubly important to readers who are directly concerned with political philosophy and social science. And, as Henri Peyre points out in the Foreword, they are an example of how the best minds of any age can serve each other.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0472751174
• ISBN13: 9780472751174
• Release Date: January 1960
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 174 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A "must" reading for anyone interested in Durkheim

I have first read this book several years ago; I have now came back to it and my first impressions have just been reasserted: it is a "must" reading for anyone interested in Durkheim's work. The reason is simple. This is one of Durkheim's early works, published in the same year as the monumental "Division of Labour in Society". However, contrary to the latter monograph, Durkheim here addresses the precursors of nineteenth-century sociology, trying to identify the antecedents of modern social sciences. In a word, if you want to fully understand Durkheim's influences and aims the careful reading of this early book is unavoidable.