Durkheim’s sociology holds that all morality originates in society’s coercive civilizing force

Evidence

All morality comes from society; there is not moral life outside society; society is best understood as a morality-producing plant; society promotes morally regulated behaviour and marginalizes, suppresses or prevents immorality. The alternative to the moral grip of society is not human autonomy, but the rule of animal passions. It is because the pre-social drives of the human animal are selfish, cruel and threatening that they have to be tamed and subdued if social life is to be sustained. Take away social coercion, and humans will relapse into the barbarity from which they had been but precariously lifted by the force of society. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 486

Categorization

• DEFINE: Canonical statement of the Durkheimian premise (morality as social product, society as moralizing force) that Bauman will dismantle.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s scaffolding toolkit via the later chapter’s contrast with Levinas’s ethics of the face-to-face; also grounds the notion that ‘immoral conduct is always a return to a pre-social state’ which the Holocaust falsifies. — connects to: Durkheim’s framework equates morality with social origin, leaving only animal drives as alternative — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 873; Durkheim reduces all morality to the single need for social integration — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 484; Sociology treats social learning as the unexamined root of all human morality — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 601 (+5 more)

Related

• Durkheim’s framework equates morality with social origin, leaving only animal drives as alternative (similarity 0.93)
• Durkheim reduces all morality to the single need for social integration (similarity 0.93)
• Sociology treats social learning as the unexamined root of all human morality (similarity 0.88)
• Socialization manipulates but never produces moral capacity (similarity 0.85)
• Orthodox sociology assumes social regulation produces morality and restrains savagery (similarity 0.84)
• Morality precedes society and society merely manipulates an already-existing moral structure (similarity 0.83)
• Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions (similarity 0.82)
• Sociology mirrored modern society by banishing ethical problematics from its discourse (similarity 0.81)
• Sociology reduces morality to derivative products of non-moral social institutions (similarity 0.81)
• Social organization displaces autonomous moral drive with instrumental and procedural rationality (similarity 0.81)
• Modern societal organization can weaken moral drives and make immorality more plausible (similarity 0.80)
• Moral violations get theorized as production failures within a factory metaphor of society (similarity 0.80)
• Explaining morality as mere authority leaves its ultimate origin unexplained (similarity 0.79)
• Moral responsibility can compel insubordination to socially upheld principles (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Orthodox sociology assumes social regulation produces morality and restrains savagery #corroborates (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 47
• Sociology treats social learning as the unexamined root of all human morality #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 601
• Morality precedes society and society merely manipulates an already-existing moral structure #contradicts (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 514
• Duty-based moralities subordinate the individual to maintenance of social norms. #expands (0.80) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 553
• Durkheim’s social facts were rule-governed actions informed by ideas #expands (0.75)
• Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions #qualifies (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 499