By Dr. Adnan Bozan

Introduction:

At the cradle of Western philosophy and throughout its intricate paths, the question of the relationship between knowledge and reality—and between the individual and society—has long formed the cornerstone from which many intellectual schools emerged. Identifying the source of knowledge and how it is formed within the human being has never been a purely epistemological matter; rather, it has served as a gateway to a deeper understanding of human existence and social being.

In this context, Émile Durkheim introduces a paradigmatic shift in thought. He neither regarded the mind as a purely rational faculty isolated from external reality, nor saw sensory experience as the sole source of knowledge. Instead, he transcended this traditional dichotomy by proposing a fundamental and innovative idea: that knowledge itself does not emerge from an isolated individual or from detached senses, but is inherently a social product—born and developed within the social structures that govern individuals' behavior and shape their perception.

Durkheim considered society not as a mere aggregation of individuals or a sum of their consciousness, but as a supra-individual entity with its own autonomous existence and effective power, no less significant than the natural forces surrounding human beings. This force, which constitutes the social entity, is what he called the "collective consciousness"—a consciousness capable of imposing cognitive models and conceptual categories that are not the property of any single individual, but rather constitute the foundation of collective awareness. Collective consciousness is the spirit that resides within the social structure and manifests in the values, symbols, rituals, and systems that shape the cultural world of humans.

Through this vision, knowledge is redefined as a phenomenon that is not merely mental or sensory but as a product inseparable from the social context in which humans live. The individual, likewise, is not understood as an autonomous being endowed with an entirely independent mind, but as part of a complex web of relationships—where collective consciousness lies at the core, governing the frameworks of perception, language, and self-awareness.

Thus, Durkheim raises a fundamental philosophical question: How can collective consciousness—this ambiguous social construct—produce cognitive truths that attain stability and objectivity, becoming rigid rules that govern the lives of individuals and societies?

This question leads to a reexamination of the concept of objectivity and knowledge, shifting us from the domain of traditional philosophy—which approached knowledge from individualistic or empirical perspectives—into the realm of sociology. Here, social truth and human knowledge are seen not as mere expressions of personal perception or sensory experiments, but as complex cultural and social accumulations embodied in the collective consciousness.

In doing so, Durkheim opens the door to the establishment of a new field: the sociology of knowledge, which studies how ideas and truths are constructed within society, how they impose themselves on individual consciousness, and how they shape the standards of thought and behavior.

In this light, the idea of collective consciousness transcends the simple notion of "the group" to become a philosophical framework that mirrors the very nature of thought itself—as if it were a cognitive infrastructure expressed by society through its symbols, norms, and laws. Hence, the concept gains immense significance not only in sociology but also in philosophy and in understanding the nature of the human being as a social entity—whose will intertwines with that of the group, and whose subjective vision intersects with the collective value system that precedes and defines his horizon of thought.

Thus, Durkheim’s concept of collective consciousness becomes one of the most critical keys to understanding the relationship between the individual and society, between knowledge and power, between the part and the whole. It represents Durkheim’s unique and profound contribution to modern philosophical and social thought. Through this concept, he boldly redefines our understanding of human knowledge—not as a mere individual cognitive act, but as a vital outcome of the interweaving of souls within an integrated social fabric.

Durkheim’s interest in collective consciousness stems from his desire to deconstruct the foundations upon which human knowledge is built and to reveal the hidden dynamics that govern its formation and circulation within human communities. From his perspective, collective consciousness is not merely a theoretical idea—it is a tangible, real force born from everyday social interactions, imposing itself on individuals in a way that compels them to adhere to particular systems of values and beliefs that far exceed them.

Thus, collective consciousness becomes a powerful organizing force of social life—it generates laws, defines cultural identity, and shapes the horizons of ethical and political imagination.

Herein lies Durkheim’s brilliance: he offered a coherent conception of how society operates as a whole and how social phenomena can possess a relative independence from the individuals who compose them. This independence reflects a collective consciousness that transcends the sum of individual minds and possesses unique properties enabling its continuity and effectiveness. Knowledge, in this view, is not merely an accumulation of personal information or individual experiences, but a continuous outcome of a social process nourished by tradition, language, customs, and shared history.

Therefore, understanding collective consciousness is essential to grasp how social truths emerge and evolve, how collective identity is shaped, and how the individual acquires consciousness and knowledge through his relationship with society. This makes Durkheim an exceptional thinker, for through this concept he laid the foundation for an intellectual structure that affirms the profound interconnection between the individual and the collective—demonstrating that neither can be truly understood in isolation from the other. Knowledge, above all, is a social phenomenon—not merely a rational individual process.

First: The Theoretical Context of the Birth of Collective Consciousness

To understand the concept of "collective consciousness" in the thought of Émile Durkheim, one must examine the theoretical and intellectual context in which it emerged. This context reflects the profound transformations in philosophy and sociology during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This era witnessed a complex interplay between attempts to interpret society as a cohesive whole and deep debates on the nature and sources of knowledge. It was within this intellectual environment that Durkheim developed a comprehensive vision that transcended traditional interpretations of the individual and consciousness.

At that time, modern philosophy was increasingly reducing knowledge to either rational or empirical concerns, treating it as a product of the individual mind or sensory experience—exemplified by thinkers like Descartes and Hume. Durkheim, however, recognized the limitations of these interpretations. He emphasized that humans do not live in an epistemic vacuum, detached from their social surroundings. Every piece of knowledge, every value, and every moral or social norm, according to Durkheim, is the result of intricate and accumulated social relations.

Thus, the birth of the concept of "collective consciousness" came as a necessary response to the gaps in classical epistemology, which neglected the role of social structures in shaping thought and knowledge. From this perspective, collective consciousness was not merely the outcome of individual minds working together—it was an autonomous entity with its own characteristics, laws, and influences, capable of shaping individual awareness and organizing social behavior. This shift marked a fundamental turn in the founding of the sociology of knowledge and widened the scope of philosophical and sociological inquiry into human awareness and knowledge.

1. Critique of Rationalism and Empiricism:

In the trajectory of modern philosophy, the question of the origins and methods of knowledge occupied a central role. Classical modern philosophy produced diverging models: rationalism, which emphasized innate reason as the foundation of knowledge, and empiricism, which considered sensory experience the sole source of knowledge. Rationalism, represented by philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza, celebrated reason as an independent means of attaining absolute truths. Empiricism, represented by Locke, Hume, and Berkeley, shifted the focus to the senses and direct experience as the basis of truth.

Durkheim stood in stark critique of this philosophical tradition. He rejected the abstract dualism that separated knowledge from social action. For him, both rationalist and empiricist traditions overlooked a fundamental element: the social structures that surround the individual and define the very conditions of possibility for knowledge. For Durkheim, reason was not an isolated tool within the individual, nor was sensory experience a solitary reception of data. Every act of knowing was, instead, a thoroughly social act embedded in a shared social context.

Durkheim’s critique thus marked a radical departure from the philosophy of the self that glorified individual isolation as the precondition of knowledge. He argued that knowledge cannot be understood apart from the social environment that produces and sustains it. Thought is not a solitary, individual act, but the product of a complex network of social interactions and cultural traditions that impose themselves on individual consciousness. Here, the source of knowledge shifts from isolated mind or sense to a "collective mind" born from the interweaving of souls and their fusion in social life—a psychological and social reality that surpasses the individual.

This critique is a philosophical protest against the supposed autonomy of reason or the senses, redrawing the map of knowledge by linking it to society and its cultural depth. It opens the way to a new understanding of knowledge as a social phenomenon, where ideas, values, and rituals take on real and active existence within the life of the group, transcending individual boundaries and becoming invisible forces that guide behavior and perception. Thus, Durkheim’s critique is not merely philosophical; it is the foundation of a renewed sociological perspective that relocates thought from the domain of the self to the domain of the collective.

- A Critical Comparison Between Rationalism and Empiricism in Light of Durkheim's Thought

The traditional understanding of rationalism rests on the premise that the human mind possesses an innate capacity to grasp fundamental truths, and thus it stands as the primary and supreme source of knowledge. Descartes is a model of this approach, with his famous dictum "I think, therefore I am," elevating the individual mind to the role of the foundational entity from which all forms of knowledge and certainty begin. Leibniz and Spinoza further built on this vision, constructing abstract rational systems with absolute principles and laws, affirming the independence of reason from experience.

Empiricism, in contrast, was a reaction to this elevated rationalism. Philosophers such as Locke and Hume believed that all knowledge originates and ends with sensory experience. In this framework, the senses dominate the domain of knowledge, and reason is a mere tool to organize the data supplied by experience, lacking any autonomous capacity to generate knowledge. Yet despite this shift from reason to sense, empiricism remained trapped in the individualist horizon—knowledge was still generated and processed within the individual's consciousness, not within wider social structures.

Durkheim identified the shared weakness in both rationalism and empiricism: their failure to account for the vital role of the social context in the formation of knowledge. His critique is not a mere rejection or revision of these traditions, but rather a foundational rethinking of the very concept of knowledge. He argued that neither rationalism nor empiricism could explain the origins of cognitive categories and frameworks that do not belong to any single individual mind, nor arise merely from accumulated isolated experiences.

In Durkheim's conception, collective consciousness surpasses individual mind and personal experience to become a powerful and autonomous structure—a psychological and epistemic entity that arises from the continuous interaction of social relations. It is embodied in symbols, language, laws, norms, and religious beliefs. These social entities not only exist within individual consciousness but impose themselves upon it, operating as binding rules that organize thought and behavior. Knowledge, then, becomes a historical, cultural, and social product rather than a purely internal mental or sensory phenomenon.

Durkheim thus offers a transcendent vision that reorients the fundamental philosophical question: not only where does knowledge come from, but how is knowledge produced in social contexts, and how does the individual acquire awareness within a complex fabric that predates and shapes his intellectual horizon. This conception opens new horizons for understanding knowledge as a collective social act that can only be fully grasped through the study of the structures and relationships in which humans are embedded.

In short, Durkheim’s critique of rationalism and empiricism elevates society as the primary actor in the production of knowledge. It shifts epistemic centrality from the individual to the collective mind—the latent power within the social fabric. In doing so, it marks a fundamental transformation in epistemological theory, whose impact continues to reverberate in contemporary social and philosophical sciences.

2. Durkheim's Influences: Positivism and Social Biology

The concept of "collective consciousness" was not an isolated invention by Durkheim, but the result of extensive reflection and interaction with multiple intellectual traditions, most notably positivism and biological thought. Durkheim was raised in an intellectual milieu heavily influenced by the positivism of Auguste Comte, who sought to transform the human sciences into objective, methodologically grounded disciplines akin to the natural sciences.

Comte’s positivism envisioned society as a natural phenomenon subject to scientific investigation, governed by laws similar to those that regulate physical and chemical phenomena. This idea helped establish a new approach to social phenomena as orderly and repetitive systems, not random or solely the result of individual wills. Durkheim internalized the necessity of treating society as a distinct scientific subject with properties that exceeded the sum of its parts.

At the same time, Durkheim was influenced by social biology, which reinforced the idea of society as an organic whole composed of interrelated parts whose functions ensure survival and continuity. This organic conception led Durkheim to envision society as a living entity with its own unity and functions, comparable to living organisms whose existence depends on the harmony and integration of their parts.

From here emerged the idea of "collective consciousness" as an attempt to understand the epistemic unity of society. Collective consciousness, in Durkheim’s view, is not a mere aggregation of individual thoughts, but an autonomous entity born of the integration and fusion of individual souls in social life. It is a distinct form of awareness with psychological and moral power that transcends individuals, serving as a supreme reference that shapes societal principles and values and determines the frameworks within which individuals think and act.

In this synthesis, Durkheim borrowed from positivism and biology both a scientific methodology grounded in objectivity and empirical research, and an organic framework to explain how society could function as an independent and living source of knowledge and values. This blend of scientific rigor and organicism enabled Durkheim to found the sociology of knowledge, which views human knowledge not as individually derived but as the product of long-standing social structures that function as a collective mind governing group consciousness and shaping the realities of social life.

- The Influence Reflected in His Works and the Foundation of the Sociology of Knowledge

Durkheim’s deep engagement with positivism and social biology is evident throughout his sociological project, especially in his methodology and his view of social phenomena as "facts" rather than mere opinions or ideas. In his foundational work The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), he explicitly declares that social phenomena must be studied "as things" — as external, objective realities that exert coercive power on individuals. This reflects the positivist aspiration to strip inquiry of subjective emotion and approach it with scientific detachment.

If this methodological stance reveals Durkheim’s positivist leanings, his concept of "collective consciousness" is the ontological outcome of his engagement with social biology. In his seminal work The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Durkheim analyzes religion not as an individual spiritual experience, but as a social system that generates and reproduces collective consciousness. He argues that symbols, rituals, and beliefs are expressions of the collective mind in religious form, and that society, in essence, deifies itself through these symbols. In Durkheim’s vision, God is the highest cognitive form of society, and religion is the vessel through which the energy of collective consciousness manifests before migrating to philosophical and scientific forms of thought.

Similarly, in his study of suicide (Suicide, 1897), Durkheim examines the phenomenon not as an individual psychological decision, but as a consequence of dysfunctions in social structures where collective consciousness fails to regulate individual awareness. Thus, suicide is transformed from a personal act into an indicator of crisis within the moral and social organization shaped by the collective mind.

Durkheim’s logic was always clear: individual consciousness is born within collective consciousness, not the other way around. This insight made him a true founder of what would later be known as the sociology of knowledge—a field that holds that every cognitive category, from language to mathematics, from religion to ethics, has a social origin, and that intellectual frameworks are not pure mental abstractions but symbolic structures produced by society to reinterpret and reimagine the world.

Through this understanding, Durkheim achieved an epistemological rupture with traditional philosophical thought that separates mind from society. In its place, he established a new methodology grounded in the dialectic between knowledge and social reality, between the individual and the group, between freedom and regulation. Collective consciousness is not only a source of knowledge, but the symbolic authority that grants meaning, sets standards, and shapes human experience at its core.

Second: Defining the Collective Mind and Distinguishing It from Individual Consciousness

When Émile Durkheim sought to understand the nature of society, he did not view it as a mere mechanical aggregation of individuals. Rather, he saw it as a living entity whose capacities exceed the sum of its parts, and within which a distinct form of consciousness resides—what he termed the collective mind. This concept cannot be reduced to a simple overlay of individual minds; it is a complex, autonomous, and active consciousness that takes shape within the structure of collective life, deriving its legitimacy and power from the continuity of customs, language, symbols, values, and religion.

In contrast, individual consciousness refers to the subjective domain of feeling, thinking, and emotional experience unique to each person as a singular being. It is the voice of the "I", shaped in part by personal experience, choice, and self-reflection—but it does not emerge in a vacuum. Every individual is born into a pre-existing web of meanings, concepts, and habits. One cannot think, judge, or even desire except through the symbols and classifications produced by the collective mind across centuries.

In this context, it becomes essential to distinguish between two types of consciousness: one rooted in the individuality of the self, and the other in the depth of the group. Durkheim insists that this distinction is not merely theoretical but has a direct impact on our understanding of knowledge, behavior, religion, law, and even human nature itself. While individual consciousness may rebel, differentiate, or dissent, it is the collective mind that legitimizes, sets norms, and guides behavior—even when it operates subtly or invisibly. It is the symbolic force that shapes the social conscience and grants reality its shared, accepted, and imposed character.

Therefore, the collective mind can only be understood in light of its relationship with individual consciousness: it precedes it in origin, surpasses it in scope, and outweighs it in influence. Although the individual may feel a degree of freedom, this freedom itself is exercised within boundaries set by society—boundaries drawn by the collective mind, which contains and directs it. Just as language precedes the speaker, so too do religious, moral, and epistemological concepts precede the individual thinker and frame the very possibilities of thought.

By making this distinction, the human being is redefined—not merely as a thinking subject but as a social being whose awareness is formed within a network of shared symbols and meanings. Through analyzing this contrast between the collective mind and individual consciousness, we begin to understand how norms emerge, how social order is maintained, and how culture is reproduced across generations. The collective mind, in the end, is not only the mind of society but also its memory, its vision, and its mode of being in the world.

1. The Nature of the Collective Mind: The Cognitive Being of Society

Durkheim's concept of the "collective mind" is not a mere symbolic metaphor for general discourse about culture. It is an ontological notion that describes a unique mode of cognitive existence emerging from communal life—one that attains a status independent from the individuals who constitute it. To say that the collective mind is not simply the sum of individual consciousnesses is to affirm a qualitative transformation that occurs when individual souls interact within a specific social order. This interaction does not produce mere accumulation but gives rise to a new intellectual–spiritual being, one with its own energy and properties irreducible to its components.

Durkheim builds this concept on two intertwined foundations. First, that society is not a mechanical sum of individuals but an organic structure in which systems of relationships, values, and meanings emerge—systems that surpass and govern the individuals within. Second, that this structure is not static but, over time, produces modes of thought, evaluation, and behavior that become generalized norms imposed upon individuals and reproduced across generations.

In this sense, the collective mind—though not in its essence, but in its structure—resembles complex natural phenomena, such as a living organism that cannot be explained solely by its organs, but by the interrelated functions generated by its totality. The collective mind is the mind of society, not because it has a “brain” in a biological sense, but because it possesses a symbolic–social system that produces meaning, evaluates reality, and establishes what individuals consider self-evident, sacred, or rational.

This collective mind is manifest in language, religion, customs, law, and ethics—all of which are “elementary forms” of social intellectual existence. They do not emerge from an individual mind but are imposed upon individuals from birth. A person does not create the language they speak, nor the values by which they judge actions—they inherit these from the outside, from the hidden collective spirit that constitutes the soul of society.

Yet, paradoxically, this “outside” is not entirely external; it dwells within each individual—as conscience, as a sense of duty, as fear of guilt, or as faith. It is external in its origin, internal in its effect. It is a form of consciousness that exercises its power without violence, molding individuals without direct coercion, because it has become naturalized, embedded within cultural self-evidence.

What most distinguishes the collective mind is its relative autonomy from individuals. It is not reducible to their opinions and continues to exist even as generations pass. Individuals may contribute to its transformation or even challenge it—but they do not create it from nothing. It resembles the collective consciousness of tradition or cultural memory that inhabits us even when we are no longer aware of it, shaping our perception of reality just as a frame shapes both the form and meaning of an image.

As Durkheim saw it, the collective mind is a prior condition for any social knowledge. It is what renders truth shared, meaning communicable, and reality nameable and classifiable. Without it, all that remains is isolated individual consciousness—incapable of producing knowledge that can be shared or accumulated. Thus, the collective mind is not merely a sociological phenomenon but a foundational structure of knowledge, of thought, and of culture itself.

2. Characteristics of the Collective Mind: The Normative Structure of Social Thought

When we reflect on the nature of the "collective mind" as conceptualized by Durkheim, we must not envision it as a mysterious entity or abstract notion suspended in a void. Rather, it is a concrete structure with specific traits, whose effects can be observed and analyzed across social, cultural, and symbolic life. This mind is not a "thing" in the material sense, but a presence—a cognitive–systemic force that operates in the background of individual consciousness, shaping it more deeply than we realize. Its essential features can be summarized in three existential attributes that reveal its essence and function in structuring and directing collective thought:

First: Ontological Priority Over the Individual

From the moment a human being is born—indeed, before they even become aware of themselves—they find themselves immersed in a dense network of ready-made symbols: language, religion, ethics, rituals, customs, beliefs. These systems are not inventions of the individual; they are accumulated symbolic inheritances formed across generations and now function as a "superstructure" that precedes individual existence and infiltrates awareness before speech is even learned.

This priority means that the individual does not generate their cognitive framework from scratch. Rather, they receive it as a pre-formed structure, a mental mold into which nascent consciousness is poured. Thus, the collective mind becomes a precondition of thought, not its product. Just as one cannot think outside of language, one cannot imagine the world outside the frameworks crafted by the collective mind. One is born within meaning, not into a void.

Second: Symbolic Coercion and Invisible Power

The collective mind does not wield whips or violence—it exercises a kind of soft and compelling power at once. It does not impose itself through direct commands, but through what is “obvious,” “natural,” and “socially acceptable.” It directs behavior without our awareness, determining what can be thought, what must not be thought, what is considered correct or deviant, legitimate or illegitimate.

This power is exerted by the cultural unconscious: it does not require strict institutions, for it resides within each individual as a "voice of conscience," a "sense of shame," or a "fear of ostracism." When a person acts according to what “ought” to be, they are not simply responding to rational individual conviction, but to a collective guidance deeply rooted in their consciousness since childhood. As Durkheim put it: “Society exists within us”—not as another person, but as a general consciousness that governs us from behind the veil of awareness.

Third: Totality and Cultural Formation

The collective mind is not confined to a specific social group or class, nor to a particular field of knowledge. It is a total structure that permeates the entire cultural fabric. It appears in everyday details—in the language we speak, in gestures and habits, in rituals and beliefs, in the ways we grieve and rejoice, in the etiquette of food and death, and even in modes of worship and abstract thought.

At the same time, it is a complex cultural product, shaped historically through the symbolic accumulations generated by a community over time. It is not static but transforms and reproduces itself in response to social change—albeit slowly. Thus, it reflects the culture of a community in a particular historical moment, while simultaneously functioning as a mechanism for the continuity of social identity.

It is akin to Carl Jung’s collective unconscious, but more specific—not just a reservoir of symbols, but a structured moral–epistemic system that regulates society and shapes individuals according to norms they often cannot critique or escape.

Taken together, these three characteristics—priority, coercion, and totality—render the collective mind not merely a sociological concept, but a philosophical given that redefines the very notion of the human: not as an isolated thinking subject, but as a symbolic–social being who cannot think except within a collective structure that precedes, guides, and contains them. The collective mind, then, is the "social spirit" that thinks through us—and to understand ourselves, we must first understand it.

Third: Religion as the Highest Manifestation of the Collective Mind

Émile Durkheim's sociological project cannot be fully understood without delving into his conception of religion as the deepest symbolic foundation in which the power of the collective mind is manifested in its purest and most influential form. Durkheim did not regard religion, throughout its long history, as merely a personal spiritual experience or a metaphysical system of beliefs. Rather, he saw it primarily as a social phenomenon—one that should be understood not in relation to metaphysics, but in relation to the collective structure that produced it. In religion, the "collective spirit" condenses and takes on a sacred form—as a god, a totem, or a ritual—which, at its core, does not express the beyond, but rather society itself, reflected with an aura of transcendence.

His seminal work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), was the culmination of his theory of the collective mind and a pioneering attempt to ground the social dimension of religion. Through the analysis of religious phenomena among so-called “primitive” peoples, Durkheim sought not to view them as “primitive,” but as original symbolic structures through which the deep logic of collective thought could be traced. He chose to study totemism among Australian tribes as the “elementary forms” capable of revealing what lies at the origin of religious phenomena and what is shared in their deep essence across civilizations.

According to Durkheim, the god—in one of its manifestations—is the highest symbol of the group itself. When a person worships a sacred being, they are not merely worshiping an external entity, but rather the collective forces that embody the cohesion, continuity, and memory of the group. The deity—in one of its dimensions—is the sacred representation of the collective mind, of the values that form the core of social life, which the group cannot preserve unless it transforms them into sacred and absolute symbols. Thus, the religious ritual is not merely a metaphysical performance, but a ritual that re-produces the group itself, reinforcing a shared emotional unity among its members, where the individual transcends the self and dissolves into the greater “whole”: the transcendent society.

With this revolutionary view, Durkheim inverts the classical equation: it is not religion that creates society, but society that creates religion. Religious consciousness, then, is a form of collective self-awareness, expressed through symbols, rituals, taboos, and sanctity. These are not “illusions,” as Feuerbach or Marx might have claimed, but functional mechanisms that generate social unity and provide a sense of cohesion, meaning, and continuity.

Thus, religion becomes the ideal field for observing how the collective mind operates—not merely as a set of shared values, but as a symbolic force that exercises authority over individuals through the sacred. Religion is the point where the social becomes sacred, and the collective mind becomes a supreme authority—not to be questioned, but to be worshiped.

This vision does not diminish the significance of religious experience but reinterprets it as a profound collective essence. Religious devotion is not merely individual belief; it is an expression of belonging to a symbolic memory that spans millennia. For Durkheim, religion is one of the most vital structures that has sustained the continuity of human societies, as it formed a bridge between the individual and the group, between the self and the whole, between chaos and order.

Hence, religion—according to Durkheim—emerges as the clearest example of the manifestations of the collective mind, and as one of the key domains in which collective consciousness crystallizes in a transcendent form that imposes itself not as external coercion, but as an inner sanctity obeyed with reverent will.

1. Collective Rituals as Symbolic Production:

From the Group to the Symbol, and from the Symbol to the Group

In his analysis of religious phenomena, Durkheim did not treat rituals as mere repetitive acts or meaningless ceremonies, but as dense, charged, and pivotal moments in which the group appears in its most intense form, and through which symbols are created that transcend the immediate occasion to become “pillars of collective identity.” Rituals, for Durkheim, are not the reflection of isolated spiritual experiences, but rather symbolic social acts, born from the heart of the group and simultaneously reshaping it, intensifying its self-awareness and the boundaries that separate it from the external world.

Religious ritual, in this perspective, is the language of the group at its moment of transcendence—a moment of exiting ordinary life into a state of symbolic tension where collective symbols are recharged with psychological energy. In such moments, symbols are no longer mere signs—they become bearers of meaning, through which feelings of identity, belonging, and sanctity are experienced. In the ritual gathering, the group does not merely repeat its symbols—it recreates them. This symbolic creation is a foundational moment, allowing the reconstitution of collective consciousness and the redefinition of “who we are” and “what we believe.”

Durkheim observed that collective rituals generate a kind of exceptional collective state he termed the “moral effervescence”—a state of enthusiasm, identification, and self-dissolution into the whole, where the individual feels a power they do not possess alone, and comes to believe that their ritual action is not a personal act, but a contribution to something higher: the sacred—or society itself in its manifested form.

Thus, ritual is a dual symbolic act:

• On one hand, the group produces the symbol through dense emotional interaction;

• On the other, the symbol transcends the group and returns as a “higher truth” that becomes authoritative, binding, and sacred.

In other words, the ritual does not belong to the past, but to the living present that re-establishes the group by renewing its symbols. Every ritual is, at its core, a socio-political act, as it defines shared values, reinforces the group’s symbolic authority over individuals, and renews the legitimacy of social roles and collective categories.

Since symbols are recharged through ceremonial repetition, ritual becomes a collective mechanism of memory—not merely in the sense of recall, but as a way to reconfigure the present in light of a sacred past. Religious ritual is a narrative-embodied act, re-enacting the group’s mythology and giving it a lived presence in the now. We do not merely perform the ritual—we live history through it, in an existential experience that reawakens collective time and binds it to identity.

Thus, rituals are not marginal to religion—they are its beating heart. They are the moment where collective time meets meaning, where society itself becomes the “object of worship” through the symbol. That is why Durkheim claimed that the deity is nothing but an idealized image of society, presented in the ritual as a transcendent entity to be worshiped and obeyed, while in essence it is the group’s power to reproduce itself through symbols.

Hence, collective rituals for Durkheim are not just religious practices, but a continuous founding process of identity, authority, and meaning. They are the clearest manifestation of how the "collective mind" works as a symbolic force—creating and reshaping the social structure each time the group celebrates itself through a sacred symbol.

2. Religion and Knowledge:

Cognitive Categories as Embodiments of Sacred Collective Experience

One of Durkheim’s most daring and groundbreaking propositions is his reinterpretation of the major epistemological categories—such as time, space, number, and causality—not as purely the result of individual reason, nor as directly derived from sensory experience, but as rooted in the symbolic and social structures produced by religion. In this, he opposed two major philosophical traditions: rationalism, which saw these categories as innate faculties (as in Descartes and Kant), and empiricism, which held that they arise from sensory experience (as in Locke and Hume). Durkheim instead proposed a third approach: knowledge is forged within the group and born in a shared symbolic religious space.

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim suggests that even the most abstract concepts are, at their origin, projections of the group’s ritual and religious experience. “Time,” for instance, among Australian tribes, is understood only through the ritual calendar and ceremonial cycles. Time there is not a “mathematical quantity” as in Newton, nor a “pure intuition” as in Kant—it is a social structure formed from ritual occasions that divide life into “sacred” and “profane,” into feasts and ordinary days. Thus, time perception does not originate in the individual's mind, but is shaped in a collective structure that sanctifies a particular rhythm of life.

Likewise, “space” is not seen among primitive communities as merely geometric but as a field divided into sacred and profane areas. Rituals determine this division and grant it symbolic authority learned by the individual through the group. “Number,” similarly, derives from totemic divisions and the way the group organizes itself into clans and categories, each associated with symbols, values, and numerical markers. As for “causality,” often viewed as a cornerstone of philosophical and scientific thought, Durkheim sees it as a symbolic representation of collective action—power that appears in rituals as the source of success or failure, fertility or drought.

This view implies that even logic itself has a social origin. Rational thought, in its highest forms, is conditioned by a symbolic space shaped over millennia of collective interaction and religious experience. The mind does not generate these categories on its own—they are inherited from collective memory, which teaches us how to perceive, divide, order, and name the world. Therefore, everything we assume to be “universal” or “absolute” in knowledge carries within it traces of cultural, religious, and collective influences.

In this light, religion is not only the source of morality or social organization—it is also the cradle of major epistemological categories. It is the symbolic structure that enabled the human mind to move from randomness to order, from improvisation to classification, from chaos to concept. Religion played the role of the first organizer of the world, not merely by imposing laws or prohibitions, but by giving humans the mental tools with which to think at all.

Thus, knowledge itself becomes a social act, and “reason” is not an isolated individual faculty, but an instrument shaped by society, nourished by religion, and launched into the world as a conceptual system passed on by the group from generation to generation. Every idea in the human mind carries within it the hidden imprint of rituals, symbols, and sacred experiences lived by our ancestors.

This approach transforms the philosophy of knowledge into symbolic sociology and reveals that the mind is not an independent sovereign but the offspring of collective memory—and that every thought is, consciously or not, an echo of the group’s voice when it expressed itself through rituals, myths, and sanctities.

Fourth: Language, Morality, and the Collective Consciousness

Language and Morality as Manifestations of the Collective Consciousness and Its Symbolic Presence in Individual Awareness

If rituals and religion are the most overt focal points in the production and manifestation of the collective consciousness, then language and morality are the most enduring and deeply rooted domains shaping and guiding human awareness. In this chapter, we move from the ritualistic and doctrinal toward the deeper and more persistent structures of everyday life, to reveal how every sentence we speak and every moral value we believe in are not free expressions of an isolated individual, but the direct result of an invisible force dwelling within us—often without our awareness: the force of the collective consciousness.

Émile Durkheim viewed language not merely as a tool for communication but as a precondition for thought itself. Humans do not think outside language; rather, language is the vessel that forms concepts and renders them mentally conceivable. Yet, the language we use is not our personal invention, nor does it stem from our individual experience; we are born into it—finding it already formed, saturated with symbols and traditions, and carrying a long legacy of collective meanings. In this sense, language becomes the collective consciousness embodied in words, the collective spirit re-encoded into a normative linguistic system that speaks through us more than we speak through it.

Morality, on the other hand, is the domain in which the collective consciousness exerts its most profound and hidden authority. The moral values we deem “self-evident,” such as honesty, justice, and loyalty, are not the product of individual intellectual reflection, but of a long history of social agreements that have become embedded in the collective conscience. Morality, according to Durkheim, is not a purely internal matter but a "social fact" imposed on the individual from the outside and internalized to the extent that it seems to arise from individual “moral consciousness,” while in fact it is the most abstract expression of the will of the collective.

We often perceive language and morality as tools we possess, yet Durkheim shows us that it is we who live under their shadow and are shaped by them. Each word and each moral value are not personal choices but symbolic infiltrations performed by the collective within the individual. Hence, analyzing language and morality reveals another face of the collective consciousness: its hidden, slow-moving, and dominant face—one that governs without violence and penetrates without declaration.

Thus, language becomes not only a means of communication but also a symbolic means of conforming to the social order. Likewise, morality becomes not merely a guide for individual behavior, but a profound regulatory mechanism ensuring the group’s stability and symbolic continuity. Between the two, the collective consciousness operates as a soft power—needing no coercion because it shapes desire itself and reconstructs awareness from within.

1. Language as a Tool for Thought and a Collective Product

One of Durkheim’s greatest epistemological revolutions in social and philosophical thought was redefining language not as an external tool for communication between minds but as a necessary condition for thought itself. For Durkheim, thought does not precede language, nor does it exist in a state of “mental purity” prior to language. Rather, it is formed and shaped within it. Thinking, then, is not an individual act of isolation but a socially encoded act through language. Thus, language is the medium that grants thought its existence, structure, and symbolic articulation.

Durkheim rejected both the Cartesian view that positions the mind as an independent essence capable of thinking without mediation, and the psychological approach that sees language as merely an expression of internal emotions or needs. Language, in his view, is an objective system that precedes the individual—one into which the human being is born, finding themselves already surrounded by a complex network of meanings and symbols they did not create, but inherited from a historical collective.

Language, therefore, is not just a collection of words, but a central symbolic system that embodies the experience of the group and shapes its conceptions of the world. It defines—implicitly—what can be said, what cannot be said, what is understandable, and what is excluded. Every word spoken carries the burden of its social and historical context; every sentence uttered does not merely emerge from the individual's mouth, but from the depth of the collective that forged the structure through which one speaks.

That is why language is one of the most powerful manifestations of the “collective consciousness,” as it functions as a mechanism for unifying perception, coordinating meaning, and consolidating the group’s symbolic identity. Language is not neutral; it is laden with the culture, values, and prejudices of the group. It teaches us not only how to speak, but also how to see, how to perceive, and how to evaluate. It even teaches us—implicitly—what is considered “realistic” or “rational,” and what is considered “impossible” or “taboo.”

Thus, when we think, we are not merely talking to ourselves; we are summoning within us the voice of the group—a voice deeply rooted in history, speaking through our vocabulary and reproducing itself in every phrase we articulate. What we often consider a “personal opinion” is, more often than not, a new articulation of a symbolic collective structure that lives within us and speaks through us.

This profound understanding transforms language from a mere tool into a regulatory force that structures thought and knowledge, turning every moment of thought into a moment of unconscious belonging to a broader collective structure. In this sense, language exceeds its instrumental function to become an ontological condition for the very existence of thought.

2. Morality as an Institution of the Collective Consciousness

Moral values are not derived from individual reason but are imposed upon the individual from the outside as “social facts” (faits sociaux). They arise from the necessity of organizing communal life and exert an almost sacred authority over individuals.

While language, in Durkheim’s thought, represents the symbolic framework through which humans think, morality represents the normative framework through which they act. Here, the “authority of the collective consciousness” shifts from shaping thought to directing behavior and organizing relationships. Thus, morality is not merely a set of behavioral rules, but a compelling symbolic structure that operates in silence but with unparalleled depth.

At the heart of Durkheim’s ethical analysis lies his famous concept of “social facts.” Morality, in his view, is not the fruit of individual rationality—as supposed by moral philosophers from Socrates to Kant—but rather social phenomena imposed on the individual from the outside and acquired through socialization and communal interaction. Morality does not arise from the isolated reflections of personal conscience but from the group’s need for stability, harmony, and symbolic cohesion. Thus, it is an institution of the collective consciousness par excellence.

Moral values such as “justice,” “duty,” “altruism,” or even “shame,” are the result of a long historical and cultural accumulation through which the group crystallized its sense of the sacred and the reprehensible. Once these values were established as patterns of collective behavior, they were no longer mere customs but evolved into normative systems through which society exercises its moral authority—an authority akin to that of religion in its binding and sacred nature.

Because morality is imposed on the individual before they even consider choosing it, it appears to them as an “external force” dwelling in their conscience, when in reality it is the collective conscience manifested in the form of inner commandments. The individual feels guilt, shame, or fear of moral punishment not because they violated a personal principle, but because they transgressed a collective norm guarded by the ever-watchful eye of society—be it through public opinion, custom, or law.

In this context, morality becomes an institution of the collective consciousness because it not only defines what is “good” or “evil,” but also produces the very awareness of these values and imprints them into the individual. It acts like a “behavioral mold” into which we are born, raised, and measured—one that cannot be transgressed without the high cost of social rejection, stigma, or punishment. Morality, then, is not an individual conscience but a collective conscience internalized into a structure of personal feeling.

Hence, what appears to be a personal moral choice is in fact a decision made within a narrowly defined framework predetermined by the collective consciousness. Even moral rebellion or deviance does not occur outside this framework, but in an implicit relationship with it—like a continuous dialogue between the individual and society, between the self and the collective conscience.

In this sense, morality is understood as a social mechanism for reproducing the symbolic and value system of the group, making it one of the most entrenched and resistant manifestations of the collective consciousness.

3. The Relationship Between Language, Morality, and the Production of Social Consciousness

In Durkheim’s sociological system, language and morality are not to be understood separately, but as two complementary tools of the collective consciousness, through whose interaction the structure of social awareness is produced. While language provides the symbolic and representational tools for thought, morality provides the standards and regulations for behavior. From the interplay of these two forces, the human perception of the world, the self, and others is formed.

Individual consciousness, in this context, is not a starting point but an endpoint; it is a social product shaped by symbolic structures that precede the individual’s existence and surround them from the very first moment. A human is born into a specific linguistic and moral system; they learn how to name things—not from themselves, but from the group—and they learn what should and should not be done, not through free reflection, but through the social regulation exercised by the group in the name of “values.” Thus, consciousness is not “free” in the philosophical sense, but a continuous reproduction of the group’s frameworks in the form of individual feeling.

This intertwining of language and morality produces a unique kind of “collective thinking” that operates even in moments of silence or individual contemplation. When the individual thinks, they think in their language—that is, in the language of their group. And when they issue a moral judgment, their criteria are drawn from the group’s value system, not from an absolute personal judgment. What appears as individual conscience or personal conviction is often the internal embodiment of the symbolic and moral structure surrounding the individual and shaping both their thought and behavior.

In this light, the relationship between language and morality takes on a subtle and critical nature: the more deeply rooted language is in the social structure, the more deeply morality is embedded in collective behavior. The more powerful the symbols, the more sacred the moral standards. Language frames understanding; morality frames action; and through both, consciousness is formed—not as freedom, but as unconscious integration into an existing social structure.

Thus, it becomes clear that, for Durkheim, social consciousness is not an accumulation atop individual awareness, but the cumulative effect of symbolic and normative relationships—of words and judgments, of naming and prohibiting—i.e., of language and morality as manifestations of the collective consciousness that lives within us and governs us, even as we believe we govern it.

Fifth: The Sociology of Knowledge in Émile Durkheim’s Thought

When Émile Durkheim overturned the traditional metaphysical order, he was not merely critiquing the foundations of classical philosophical thought. Rather, he was attempting to redefine the true root of all human knowledge: society. What appears to be rational or empirical "knowledge" is, in essence, a reflection of the social structure that produces and guides thought before it becomes a knowing subject. His concept of the “collective consciousness” paved the way for what would later become known as the “sociology of knowledge” – a field concerned not merely with the influence of society on knowledge, but with the very constitution of knowledge through the structure of society itself.

In this context, knowledge escaped the confines of the thinking subject—whether that subject was rational as in Descartes and Kant, or sensory-based as in empiricism—and came to be understood through history, culture, religion, language, and power: the living fabric of society. Durkheim brought knowledge down from the heavens of metaphysical essences to the earthly realm of institutions. Knowledge, then, was no longer a mere reflection of reality nor a pure imitation of reason; it became a deeply social product, shaped by symbolic practices, religious systems, linguistic structures, and moral codes generated and perpetuated by the collective.

Durkheim thus laid a profound theoretical foundation for understanding knowledge not as an objective truth existing outside time and space, but as a social fact (fait social)—conditioned by the collective structure that both produces and legitimizes it. Even the most basic categories of knowledge—such as number, causality, time, and space—are not, for Durkheim, purely rational constructs, but historically generated collective categories born from the community’s need for order and symbolic cohesion. What is “rational” is not what an individual mind comprehends, but what is collectively accepted as rational within the cultural horizon shaped by society.

This shift—from philosophy to sociology, from individual to collective consciousness, from contemplation to history—constituted a conceptual revolution in the study of knowledge. Thanks to Durkheim, it became possible to think of knowledge not as an independent entity, but as part of the web of meaning woven by the collective, lived through by it, and through which it constructs its vision of the world.

This section will explore how Durkheim established the foundations of the sociology of knowledge, how he used the concept of collective consciousness to explain the genesis of major cognitive categories, and how this foundation paved the way for later developments by thinkers such as Marcel Mauss, Karl Mannheim, Peter Berger, and Thomas Luckmann, who redefined the relationship between society, truth, and meaning, all rooted in the seed Durkheim first planted.

1. Against Philosophical Epistemology

In opposition to the philosophical tradition from Descartes to Kant, which made epistemology—the study of the conditions for the possibility of knowledge within the individual mind—its core concern, Durkheim took a critical stance not from within philosophy, but from outside it. He spoke from the emerging field of sociology, which redefined human phenomena according to their social contexts. Durkheim argued that classical philosophy, whether it glorified pure reason or retreated into sensory experience, had ignored a fundamental question: Where do the very conditions for thinking originate? Do they emerge from the rational nature of the individual, or from the social structures in which the individual lives unconsciously?

Durkheim rejected the philosophical epistemology formulated by Descartes, Locke, and Kant because it rested on a false premise: that the thinking subject exists first, and that it produces knowledge through internal tools (reason or experience). But where do these tools come from? What about the concepts of time, space, causality, identity, contradiction—are they not, according to Durkheim, social and historical constructs? Are they not acquired through language, religion, ritual, education, and ethical norms that are imprinted on the mind from childhood?

Durkheim called for an inversion of perspective: we should not begin with the subject to explain the world, but with society to explain the subject. Knowledge does not begin with the individual but with the symbolic structure that produces the individual as a knowing agent. Even the act of "thinking" is not a natural given; it is conditioned by language, and language is not an individual creation but a collective one. What appears as "logical thinking" can only be understood through the cultural system that defines what is considered logical and what is not. Thus, traditional philosophical epistemology gave an ontological status to categories that are, in reality, social.

In this light, Durkheim proposed a radical alternative: stop imagining knowledge as a purely mental activity, and begin studying it as a social fact—formed within the collective, imposed on the individual from outside, and shaping modes of thought, perception, and behavior without their awareness. Knowledge becomes a collective interactive product, shaped by social practices, institutions, symbols, rituals, and systems of power and meaning.

Durkheim realized that any attempt to ground knowledge solely within the mind, detached from society, is a philosophical illusion. The mind itself—as expressed through concepts, language, classifications, dichotomies—is not born in a vacuum but is shaped within a pre-existing social horizon. The mind is not "universal" in the philosophical sense; it is collective, historical, and symbolic. Thus, any genuine epistemology must pass through the sociology of knowledge.

With this proposition, Durkheim inaugurated a foundational moment in modern thought, where the knowing self is no longer the beginning but the end point. What we see as objective, rational, or logical knowledge is nothing more than manifestations of the collective mind that resides within us and thinks through us.

2. Knowledge Accumulation as a Social Structure

One of the major illusions of classical philosophy is its view of knowledge accumulation as a linear progression resulting from the pure activity of an isolated individual mind. Durkheim dismantled this view entirely, arguing that knowledge does not accumulate in a vacuum but within a shifting historical-social structure that regulates what can be thought and how.

Knowledge does not advance because "reason" uncovers transcendent truths. Rather, it advances because it serves the needs of the community, reproduces its symbolic and existential coherence, and reflects its power dynamics and internal conflicts. Every new concept, every transformation in knowledge systems, every theory or method, emerges not from a solitary mind but from the interaction with communal life, cultural-symbolic environments, and institutions that determine what counts as "knowledge" and what does not.

Thus, the collective mind is not a mere repository for knowledge, but the hidden agent that produces, filters, evaluates, and legitimizes it. Cognitive development cannot be understood from within knowledge itself, but from outside: from the social fields that define what is knowable at a given historical moment. As societal needs change, as its economic or symbolic structures shift, so too does what is considered knowledge—and the boundaries of the "rational" are redrawn.

This explains, for Durkheim, why major cognitive categories in primitive societies were steeped in religion and symbolism, and why modes of thought evolved in response to major social transformations. As society changes, the form of thought changes with it; maps of thinking are rewritten. In this sense, knowledge accumulation is not individual but collective, not linear but cumulative, not metaphysical but problematic.

Therefore, science, religion, and philosophy can only be understood within the social structures that gave birth to them. Science is not the "liberation" from superstition, as naïve positivism suggests, but a reconfiguration of rational categories in response to transformations in symbolic and social fields. Religion is not an "epistemic error" but the first collective manifestation of human reason, using sacred forms to express and reproduce collective consciousness.

Hence, the collective mind is not a passive vessel for knowledge but a dynamic structure that produces it according to its historical and collective conditions. What we call the "history of knowledge" is, in fact, the history of human communities struggling for meaning and symbolic control over the world.

In this way, Durkheim redefined knowledge accumulation not as a Platonic pursuit of truth, but as an organic product of the community’s spirit—a record of its symbolic becoming.

3. Knowledge and Power: From Collective Consciousness to Symbolic Order

If the collective mind, for Durkheim, is the source of cognitive categories and the womb from which the conditions of thought are born, it cannot be separated from the structure of power it implicitly carries—even when it appears neutral or objective. All knowledge, from this perspective, contains hierarchy, authority, and demarcations between what is deemed "reasonable" or "acceptable" and what lies outside the bounds of symbolic legitimacy.

Here, Durkheim moves beyond analyzing knowledge as a social product to seeing it as an instrument for reproducing the social order itself, through the consolidation of norms of thought and behavior.

At the heart of this conception stands the symbol—as the mediator between collective consciousness and meaning, between power and knowledge. Religious symbols, rituals, language, customs, moral ideals, even abstract concepts like "justice" or "truth"—these are not just tools of communication, but mechanisms of social control and symbolic reproduction. Knowledge is not merely an expression of the collective mind, but one of its instruments of symbolic dominance—arguably a veiled form of power.

In this context, institutions like schools, laws, literature, and even science perform a dual function: producing knowledge and reproducing the social order. Knowledge is not generated in a vacuum, but in institutions governed by collective authority and operating as mechanisms of encoding and exclusion—drawing boundaries around what is thinkable and sayable. “Cognitive authority” does not stem from individual brilliance, but from one’s position within the symbolic structure: Are they aligned with collective consciousness? Do they reproduce its symbols or subvert them? Is their discourse socially accepted or epistemically deviant?

Thus, knowledge is not an innocent pursuit of truth, but a struggle over symbols—over who is allowed to name, to classify, to interpret, to define. It is a form of symbolic power that pervades collective consciousness and exerts coercion without material violence. The collective mind, then, is not just a producer of meaning—it is also its guardian, policing the boundaries of symbolic legitimacy and reinforcing them in every ritual, in every concept, in every moral classification.

In this way, Durkheim’s sociology of knowledge transcends epistemological critique to enter the heart of symbolic political philosophy: whoever controls the mind, controls the group; and whoever controls the group, controls meaning.

4. Against Individualism: Reconstructing the Self from a Social Perspective

One of the greatest intellectual reversals Durkheim introduced into the history of philosophy and human sciences was his decisive rejection of the individualist paradigm that had dominated modern thought from Descartes to Kant. Western philosophy had long been built on the notion of the "thinking self" as the center of knowledge, the source of truth, and the foundation of understanding. The belief was that the self knows because it thinks, and it thinks because it is free—free within a mind isolated from external influences, except those permitted by free will. This view constitutes what we might call the "metaphysics of the individual."

Durkheim overturned this conception. He believed that the self is not born whole or independent, but is gradually shaped through socialization—through language, symbols, values, and institutions that shape the individual from the moment of birth. Thus, the individual does not think because they possess an abstract mind, but because they were born into a collective mind that nourishes and forms even their cognitive structure. Individual thought is not a point of departure, but the result—or more precisely: a social product.

From this perspective, the self is not a fixed essence but a fluid social construct, produced through discourses, norms, and symbolic authorities. Moral conscience, aesthetic perceptions, and philosophical concepts do not arise from a pure, isolated mind, but from a pressing collective “we,” manifest in what Durkheim called the “collective consciousness.” Even individual freedom, glorified in liberal philosophy, is comprehensible only within historical and social contexts; it is not absolute but framed by communal values and discursive limits.

Durkheim viewed the individual not as something that emerges from society, but as something that arises within it—and remains surrounded by its unseen powers even in rebellion. Rebellion itself, madness, creativity—all are expressions of a disturbed relationship between self and collective consciousness, or deviations from the symbolic order.

Durkheim’s project was not only a reevaluation of the relationship between society and knowledge, but also a deconstruction of the very concept of self as inherited from philosophy. The human being was no longer the ultimate principle of knowledge; society was the principle, and the self a trace, a crossing point between the individual and the collective.

From this vantage, “individual knowledge,” “individual ethics,” and even “individual consciousness” become illusions if detached from the social conditions that produced them. Any ontology of the self that neglects these conditions remains trapped in philosophical delusion.

5. From Durkheim to Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu: The Enduring Legacy of Collective Consciousness

Durkheim’s influence did not end with the sociology of religion or knowledge; it extended deep into contemporary thought. Many philosophers and theorists reexamined the notions of self, language, and perception through frameworks that reinstated the social dimension of consciousness. Thus, Durkheim’s concept of the collective consciousness continued to echo—sometimes under different names—in the works of his intellectual heirs and even in philosophies not traditionally classified as sociological.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, though not using the term “collective consciousness,” launched a parallel critique of classical individualism. He asserted that even sensory perception does not stem from a disembodied "I," but from a body embedded in the world—absorbing its language, customs, and values. The body, for Merleau-Ponty, is not a biological machine but a symbolic-social structure. Consciousness is never purely subjective; it is constantly being shaped within a collective matrix. In this, one can hear a deep Durkheimian resonance: knowledge is not the outcome of an independent mind but the product of lived experience in a symbolic social space.

Pierre Bourdieu took the concept of collective consciousness to a more complex level through his ideas of habitus, field, and symbolic capital. According to Bourdieu, individuals do not think with pure freedom, but within a socially rooted habitus—an internalized structure embodying social and cultural history. Thought is not free but patterned and socially founded. Knowledge is never produced outside the symbolic and social fields that organize its creation.

Thus, Durkheim’s thesis on collective consciousness remains alive—under various names and in different frameworks: in every theory that critiques the centrality of the self, in every argument that stresses the social character of language, and in every view that sees power as symbolic and embedded in systems of knowledge and ethics. Even post-structuralist and anti-humanist schools bear Durkheimian traces as they decenter the ego and redistribute agency among discourse, power, and structure.

Collective consciousness, in this broader view, is not just a sociological concept, but a key to deconstructing the metaphysical self that long ruled Western thought. Through it, we can reimagine the limits of individuality, the conditions of knowledge, and the authority of symbols—not as historical legacies alone, but as foundational pillars for any critical or philosophical project today.

Conclusion: Collective Consciousness Between the Necessity of Society and the Possibility of Transcendence

At the heart of Émile Durkheim’s project pulses an ancient philosophical question dressed in modern sociological terms: What is the source of thought? From where does consciousness emerge? And who determines the conditions and boundaries of knowledge? Durkheim answered with revolutionary clarity: it is neither individual reason nor sensory experience, but society itself—as a symbolic entity that precedes the individual, contains him, directs him, and even creates him. Collective consciousness, as he formulated it, is not a mere byproduct of social relations, but the deep structure that generates meaning and provides individuals with the very tools of thought.

In this sense, the individual cannot think outside of language, language cannot exist outside the group, and the group cannot endure without symbols reinforced through ritual and surrounded by the aura of the "sacred." Religion, morality, language, time, space, causality—all of these are not natural givens, but social constructs, cemented by the collective consciousness and imposed upon individuals as "self-evident truths."

Yet this conception, at its core, presents a profound existential and philosophical paradox: if all our thoughts are products of the collective mind, can we ever truly think freely? Is every attempt at transcendence—at change, revolution, rebellion—also socially conditioned? Can a human being see beyond the frame constructed by society, when even the tools of perception are themselves social constructs?

These questions, which Durkheim opens but does not close, do not undermine the possibility of freedom; rather, they deepen the conditions for its realization. The individual does not become free by ignoring the collective mind, but by recognizing it, analyzing it, and deconstructing its hidden structures. True knowledge, in this light, does not begin with the Cartesian “I think,” but with “we think in me.” The self is not realized in isolation, but in its awareness of its determinants—in its movement between what is imposed and what is possible, between what shapes it and what it can reshape.

Émile Durkheim thus opened a new philosophical path, where sociology intersects with epistemology, and knowledge shifts from being an individual construction to a constantly evolving social manifestation. Along this path, we find not only a key to understanding religion, morality, and language, but an entry point into understanding the human being himself—as a creature born into a mind not entirely his own, yet capable—through awareness—of reshaping it from within.

Thus, collective consciousness, in Durkheim’s thought, ceases to be merely a descriptive sociological concept. It becomes a philosophical tool for analyzing the human being as a socialized creature, unable to think, believe, or act outside the symbolic structures he inherits. And if the self possesses its freedom only through awareness of the constraints that shape it, then the awareness of the collective mind is the first step toward its critique, its transcendence, and perhaps, its reconstruction.

Sixth: Philosophical Critique and Analysis of the Concept of the Collective Mind

The concept of the "collective mind", as developed by Émile Durkheim, is among the most controversial notions in modern sociological and philosophical thought. On one hand, it represents a radical shift away from philosophical centralism that has long regarded individual reason as the source of truth and self-consciousness as the foundation of all knowledge. On the other hand, it opens the door to troubling questions about the limits of individual freedom, the possibility of independent thought, and the status of the self in a world shaped by invisible structures manifesting in religion, ethics, language, customs, and symbols.

This concept, with its profound sociological depth, is not free from sharp philosophical tensions: Is the collective mind an anthropological reality that can be empirically observed, or is it a theoretical construct that strips thought of its individualistic character to reproduce a new kind of authority? Can a concept based on social determinism be consistent with the possibility of self-criticism or moral liberation? What are the boundaries of this "collective mind"? Can it be distinguished from ideology or the symbolic domination later discussed by thinkers such as Althusser and Bourdieu?

In this section, we seek to philosophically deconstruct the concept—not to refute it, but to expose its ontological and epistemological foundations and to interrogate its theoretical, cognitive, and existential implications. We will focus on the tension between social determinism and the possibility of freedom, reconsider the position of the self between “symbolic puppets” and “liberating potentials.” Just as the collective mind opens a horizon for understanding humans as social beings, it simultaneously forces us to consider the fragility of our independence, the limits of our awareness, and the roots of our ideas that we call “we.”

1. Power and Domination: The Collective Mind Between Constitutive Structure and Restrictive Authority

Durkheim’s concept of the collective mind is foundational not only within sociology but also deeply rooted in philosophy, where epistemological questions meet questions of power, and analysis of symbolic structures intersects with critiques of individual freedom. Durkheim introduced it as the “collective spirit” that produces meaning and provides the social reality with its cognitive and ethical form. Yet, this very mind is also characterized by coercion, prompting us to ask: Does the collective mind represent a constitutive energy that produces social cohesion, or is it an authoritarian apparatus that reproduces domination? Is what we call collective mind truly “reason,” or is it a forced ideological assemblage? Can individual freedom grow in its shadow, or is it crushed under the weight of its symbols, language, and value systems?

a. The Coercive Character of the Collective Mind

Durkheim starts from the premise that social facts impose themselves on individuals with an irresistible force. Language, religion, customs, and beliefs are not individual choices but ready-made givens that are born with us and shape our consciousness without our awareness. In this sense, the collective mind is not merely a symbolic space but a social power that regulates behavior and predefines patterns of thought. Here lies the philosophical tension: while these systems are presented as necessities for society’s survival, they may close off horizons of difference and reproduce what exists as natural, self-evident, or even sacred.

The “soft power” of the collective mind is exercised not through physical violence but through the power of meaning. Those who speak a different language, hold different beliefs, or live by unfamiliar ethics are not only rejected but excluded, stigmatized, and possibly criminalized. Thus, the collective mind shifts from a symbolic force producing solidarity to a system of discipline and surveillance, functionally not unlike political or religious authority in its repressive forms.

b. Symbolic Domination and the Concept of the “Sacred”

In his Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim asserts that religion is the supreme manifestation of the collective mind, creating a symbolic system capable of uniting the community around shared values. Philosophically, however, the “sacred” produced by the collective mind is a form of symbolic domination that masks the interests of power behind the guise of collective spirit. This relationship between the collective mind and ideology is later elaborated by thinkers such as Althusser and Bourdieu. Like ideology imposing on individuals a worldview as natural, the collective mind creates a cognitive structure seen by individuals as “truths” or “axioms,” whereas these are historically and culturally conditioned choices.

Thus, the collective mind becomes akin to “power without a ruler, surveillance without a watcher”; domination when it becomes invisible, authority embodied in language, rituals, norms, and “common sense” — the deepest forms of control.

c. Solidarity or Repression of Plurality?

Durkheim aimed to show that the collective mind produces social solidarity, whether in traditional societies (mechanical solidarity based on similarity) or in modern societies (organic solidarity based on difference and interdependence). Yet we ask: does it truly produce solidarity, or does it repress difference in the name of harmony? Can the unity of the group be reconciled with individual freedom if the collective mind acts as a mold emptying individual consciousness and shaping it by communal standards?

Plurality — as the possibility of alternative opinions and ways of life — is only possible if society recognizes distinct voices. Yet, in many manifestations, the collective mind suppresses such differentiation. It does not easily tolerate “strangeness,” “difference,” or “dissent.” Everything that contradicts the system is labeled negatively: heresy, deviation, abnormality, betrayal, atheism. Hence, the collective mind not only produces meaning but also stigma, classifies, and determines what is legitimate or illegitimate in thought and behavior.

d. Toward Radical Critique: Are Freedoms Possible?

Durkheim’s project, despite its constructive nature, contains latent critical potentials. Recognizing the collective mind as symbolic power is itself a philosophical awareness that could be the starting point for liberation. Just as Foucault called for an “archaeology of knowledge” and a “critique of discourse,” revisiting the collective mind in the light of contemporary philosophy enables us to deconstruct unconscious structures that shape us and to question authority where it is not recognized as authority. The critique here targets not society itself but the rigid forms of the collective mind that claim to be “nature,” “truth,” or “sacred,” while they are merely revisable, deconstructible systems.

In conclusion, Durkheim’s collective mind is one of modern thought’s greatest attempts to understand the human-society relationship, but it also compels us to ask the ultimate question: Do we own our ideas, or do our ideas own us? Can we think outside the conditions of the group without falling into isolation or madness? Between the need for belonging and the desire for individuality, between the collective framework that provides meaning and the individual consciousness that seeks critique, the fate of the contemporary human oscillates.

2. The Individual and Difference: Possibilities of Liberation from the Collective Mind

If, according to Durkheim, the collective mind precedes and shapes the individual, the fundamental philosophical question arises: can the individual free themselves from the grip of this mind? Is there a possible distance between the self and the social system that produced it? At the heart of this dilemma lies the ongoing tension between the social and the individual, between assimilation and difference, between obedience and rebellion.

a. The Collective Mind as a System Producing Selves

Durkheim’s basic hypothesis is that the individual cannot think outside the social givens that provide reason with its tools. Language—the primary tool of thought—is not an individual invention but a prior collective product. Likewise, morality, religion, time, space, number, causality—all concepts generated from social life and imposed on individual consciousness as “self-evident facts.” The challenge is: how can the self exercise a critical or divergent act when surrounded by ready-made propositions?

Thus, liberation from the collective mind, in Durkheim’s strict sense, is like attempting to shed one’s skin, think without language, or be born into a void. The self is fundamentally a social construction; it does not precede society but is created within and by it.

b. From Domination to Symbolic Resistance

Nonetheless, human historical and epistemic experience shows continuous possibilities to transcend, reinterpret, deconstruct, or deviate from the collective given. Critical consciousness does not emerge outside the community but does not stop at it either. The possibility of critical thought is itself a manifestation of the collective mind when it opens space for difference rather than enclosing it.

Hence, the concept of the collective mind should not be understood as a solid homogeneous mass but as a field of symbolic struggles where compliance coexists with resistance, belonging with reconsideration, tradition with transcendence. While the individual is socially conditioned, they are not existentially excluded from freedom but capable—through symbolic and critical action—of shaking some certainties or creating new spaces for thought.

c. Individuality as an Act of Resistance

An individual aware of their social condition and unwilling to surrender it as absolute establishes a space of individuality that is neither illusion nor isolation but an authentic philosophical act. Individuality here does not mean breaking with society but reclaiming the self as an entity capable of choice—at least within the limits imposed by the symbolic and social reality. Many of history’s greatest intellectual and historical transformations resulted from individuals rebelling against the dominance of the collective mind: from Socrates challenging Athenian morals, to prophets confronting dominant religious norms, to philosophers and thinkers reshaping language, identity, and the self.

In this sense, liberation from the collective mind is not achieved by exiting it but by interrogating it from within and transforming it from silent authority into an object of conscious critique. Freedom begins not when we transcend the collective mind but when we realize its conditions and expose its mechanisms.

Ultimately, understanding the collective mind is incomplete unless we see it not only as a source of cohesion but as a field of domination and resistance alike. It is the structure that produces selves but also one that can be reproduced through conscious individual action. Between integration and dissidence, every sincere intellectual life and every self aspiring not to be a mere echo of the group but a free resonance of what could be, fluctuates.

3. The Self and the Other in the Structure of the Collective Mind: Identity as a Collective Product

Durkheim’s approach to the collective mind leads us to a fundamental question in the philosophy of the self: How does the “I” form in a space defined by the Other? Is there a possibility for the self to exist or be defined outside networks of collective belonging? According to his conception, the Other is not simply the “other” encountered but the structure through which the self is defined and the context that precedes and shapes the self before self-awareness.

a. Self-consciousness is Conditioned by the Other

In modern philosophy from Descartes to Hegel, the “I” was assumed to be self-sufficient or self-founding. Durkheim turns this on its head: consciousness is not built in isolation but in relation. This relation is not only between me and another individual but between me and the community — between me and a complete symbolic accumulation of values, language, myths, and concepts.
The self is thus not an isolated essence but a continuous intersection with the Other, who here is the collective mind itself: the society that gives me my name, language, gender, religion, morals, and awareness of place and time. Hence, any attempt to define the self outside its social structure appears, to Durkheim, as a kind of metaphysical abstraction.

b. The Collective Mind Produces Both Identity and Otherness

The collective mind not only produces unified notions of “we” but also produces conceptions of “others” who do not belong to us. These others may be religious, ethnic, cultural, or class-based. Thus, the collective mind is not only a field of identification but also a tool for producing differences, boundaries, and closed identities. Every group symbolically defining itself produces an implicit negation of the other and uses the collective mind as an instrument of cohesion and sometimes exclusion.

The very concept of “identity” becomes, in this context, contingent on a collective moment — a moment of domination: when the group imposes a specific representation of the self on its members and defines them through a coercive collective model. Here lies the sharp philosophical tension between identity and openness, between socially constructed self and the self capable of reinventing itself beyond the group’s will.

c. Is There an “I” Outside the Collective Mind?

From Durkheim’s perspective, no. Every thought—even rebellious thought—occurs within linguistic and symbolic systems produced by society. This recalls Wittgenstein’s later insight: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” However, despite this containment, philosophy since its inception has maintained faith in the possibility of transcending or at least questioning conditioning. Thus, the “I” remains capable of resisting the collective mind not by exiting it but by breaking its uniformity and planting seeds of divergence and difference within it.

Thus, the self shifts from a symbolically imposed entity to a symbolic actor who reinterprets collective heritage and produces alternative possibilities for existence and meaning. It is a self not outside the group but that does not dissolve in it, but rather inscribes its mark within its folds.

In conclusion, the concept of the collective mind appears as a double-edged thread: it grants humans tools of knowledge and belonging but may also strangle them within the limits of collective identity. Between the “we” that shapes meaning and the “I” seeking liberation, philosophical thought remains the deepest arena of struggle between assimilation and difference, between living within the group and thinking outside its molds.

4. Modernity and the Fragmentation of the Group: The Fate of the Collective Mind in the Era of Individualism

Durkheim’s concept of the collective mind was developed within a sociological framework viewing society as a cohesive whole governed by organic or mechanical bonds that produce unified standards of behavior, knowledge, religion, language, and ethics. However, the entry of modern societies into the vortex of accelerated modernity, accompanied by economic, cultural, and intellectual transformations, urges a fundamental questioning: Does the collective mind still wield the authority it had in traditional societies? Or has the power of individualization and group fragmentation undermined the foundations of this concept?

a. From Organic Society to Liquid Space

Zygmunt Bauman, a leading philosopher of liquid modernity, tells us that modern societies no longer possess the “moral solidity” that organized collective life as in traditional societies. Standards are no longer unified, identities are no longer fixed, references are no longer communal. Modernity transformed humans from beings embedded in the group into flexible beings seeking their selves in the mirror of individuality rather than group authority. Here the collective mind as a coercive entity erodes.

b. Globalization and Multiple Collective Minds

The collective mind has not vanished but changed shape and domain. While traditional societies possessed a relatively singular collective mind (unified by religion, custom, or ritual), the globalized world has produced interconnected, competing, and sometimes contradictory collective minds. Today, we do not live within one collective mind but in a symbolic entanglement of national, religious, digital, class-based, and global collective minds. Thus, the collective mind no longer acts as a unifying force but as a battleground of multiple, diverse symbols.

c. Institutions as Guardians of the Collective Mind

In modern societies, the group has receded in favor of institutions: schools, state, media, market. These institutions have become the new carriers of what remains of the “collective mind.” However, they no longer emanate from internal affective fusion as in traditional religious rituals but operate according to bureaucratic mechanisms and technical criteria. The collective mind has shifted from a “collective consciousness” to “symbolic management,” from belonging to function, and from emotion to efficiency. This explains why the collective mind is fragile in the face of modern individual rebellion or retreat into the self.

d. From Belonging to Temporary Identity

In the age of social networks and digital technology, identity has become more a matter of “choice” than “belonging.” Individuals today move between virtual symbolic groups and reshape their image in each space they enter. Social bonds have thus turned from fixed relations into temporary, easily severable and replaceable connections. In this context, the collective mind no longer precedes the individual but is often produced by their desires, whims, and temporary alliances. The relationship has changed: the collective mind no longer precedes the individual but is sometimes produced according to their demand.

Summary: In the age of modernity, the symbolic authority of the traditional collective mind has declined but not ended. It has entered new forms: networked, institutional, plural. Although individuals have gained greater freedom from collective ties, they have not become free of them altogether. Modern freedom lies not in the absence of the collective mind but in its multiplicity, our negotiation with it, and our capacity to live on its margins without being swallowed by it. Hence, the concept of the collective mind remains present—not as a closed certainty but as an open philosophical question concerning the boundaries of self and other, belonging and difference, knowledge and power.

5. Comparison with Other Philosophers: The Collective Mind in the Mirrors of Modern Philosophy

The concept of the "collective mind" in Émile Durkheim’s thought does not exist in isolation within philosophical discourse but finds echoes and parallels in the works of several major thinkers who grappled with the problematic relationship between the individual and the group, between the self and the whole, and between freedom and symbolic authority. Although these thinkers did not use the exact term, their reflections reveal conceptual features that intersect with the structure of the collective mind as outlined by Durkheim, shedding light on its dimensions from different perspectives—sometimes complementary, sometimes opposing.

A. Hegel and the Objective Spirit: The Collective Mind as the Mind of History
Hegel approaches, from a different angle, a concept close to the collective mind when he speaks of the "Objective Spirit," understood as the manifestations of mind in major institutions such as the state, law, and ethics. Within this framework, the mind is not located in the individual but in history, where freedom is realized through the integration of the individual into the universal spirit. The Hegelian state, as the peak development of spirit, is not far from Durkheim’s view of society as a source of values, ideas, and knowledge. Both see the whole as preceding the part, and the self becomes a true self only through its immersion in the community. However, the fundamental difference is that Hegel grants this spirit a dialectical rational-historical dimension, while Durkheim attributes to it a sociological and empirical character based on social phenomena.

B. Freud and the Collective Unconscious: Society as a Carrier of Unconscious Identity
In psychoanalysis, Freud approaches a related concept through the collective unconscious, especially in rituals, religion, and traditions where cultural identity is reproduced unconsciously. Although Carl Jung explicitly coined the term "collective unconscious," Freud pointed out that religion, ethics, and traditions are not merely rational choices but psychological structures inherited collectively. Here we observe a significant convergence with Durkheim’s conception: both see the individual born into a world of symbols and meanings that shape them unconsciously and reproduce the community through them. The fundamental difference is that Durkheim reads these symbols from outside the self (sociologically), while Freud reads them from within the psyche (psychologically).

C. Nietzsche and the Repressive Mind: Conformity Against Individuality
In contrast to Durkheim, Nietzsche appears as a radical critic of all forms of conformity and collective values that drain the individual of their unique genius. For Nietzsche, the collective mind is a mechanism that denies free will; it is a "herd" apparatus that subjects the individual to slave morality and turns the person into a pale copy of the group’s desires. Here, the collective mind appears as the antithesis of life, impulse, and creativity. While Durkheim saw society as "the whole that produces knowledge," Nietzsche saw it as the whole that suffocates true knowledge and produces morality as a mask for weakness and submission.

D. Conclusion: Multiple Faces of the Community
Through these comparisons, it becomes clear that the "collective mind" is not a concept confined to sociology alone but is a broad philosophical intersection of views that regard the community either as a condition for the realization of the self (as in Hegel), or as an unconscious psychological structure (as in Freud), or as a force of repression and conformity (as in Nietzsche). Thus, the collective mind takes on multiple faces depending on the perspective: it is the mind of history, or the unconscious of culture, or the mask of symbolic power. And between these faces, the question remains open: does a human need the community to be? Or does one need to be free from it in order to truly exist?

Conclusion: Toward a Radical Social Understanding of Mind and Knowledge

Émile Durkheim marked a decisive turning point in the course of modern Western thought—not merely because he presented a new theory in sociology, but because he reshaped philosophical questions at their very roots, moving them from the realm of introspective reflection to the depths of social structure. When he asserted that society thinks us, he overturned the philosophical heritage from Descartes to Kant and undermined the grand hypothesis that had ruled for centuries: that the individual mind is the mirror of truth. Durkheim’s sociology did not deny the mind, but rather repositioned it—not as an isolated singular subject, but at the heart of the collective, in rituals, symbols, language, the sacred, and the familiar.

The concept of the "collective mind" revealed a deeper structure of human existence—one that does not view the individual as a primary unit but as a composite product of social frameworks that permeate their thoughts, values, emotions, and even their perception of space, time, and rationality. In Durkheim’s view, the mind is not an isolated entity but a manifestation of a symbolic-cultural-social heritage reproduced across generations. This is why knowledge, ethics, religion, and even language itself are not merely tools in the individual’s hand but mechanisms shaped by society—and through which society shapes the individual.

Hence, Durkheim’s importance lies not only in founding an independent sociology but in offering a radical alternative to philosophical epistemology, which has long treated knowledge as a purely intellectual process. His call to regard epistemic categories—from space and time to number and causality—as social categories before being intellectual ones means that consciousness does not precede the group but is formed within it. In this sense, all thinking occurs within a collective heritage, and every idea is a legitimate offspring of a social context.

Yet, alongside this rich explanatory power, one cannot ignore the critical philosophical questions this concept opens regarding power, freedom, and plurality. If the collective mind is the one that thinks and legislates, where is there room left for individual dissent? Can the self be created outside the framework that created it? Is this not a form of social determinism that negates creativity and difference? These questions are not indictments of Durkheim but rather continuations of his thought, for a great thinker like him is only understood through the horizons he opens, not the doors he closes.

Today, in a postmodern world where identities fragment, groups splinter, and symbols clash, there is an urgent need to revisit Durkheim—not as a source of certainty but as an analytical tool to understand the deep formation of our selves within the collective. We return to him not to resign ourselves but to reflect and reconstruct a critical understanding of knowledge from its social position, far from the illusion of the absolute individual.

Durkheim realized long before many others that what we consider "personal" is essentially "social," and that freedom is not achieved outside society but through understanding, critiquing, and interacting with its structures. Thus, the future of the sociology of knowledge—of which Durkheim was a pioneer—does not lie in replacing philosophy but in enriching it with a view that grounds humanity in its symbolic and lived environment. This is the quiet revolution Durkheim began, which still inspires us to understand the self through the other, mind through the collective, and meaning through history.

Thus, the collective mind is not the end of thought but its true beginning.

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