Durkheim Through the Lens of Aristotle

Douglas F. Challenger is assistant professor of sociology at Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire.

This book hits on a series of important developments in sociological theory...his work should provide welcome reading... Social Forces This well-written and lucid book is timely in view of the recent upsurge of interest in returning to Aristotle and to Emile Durkheim for resources for contemporary social theory. -- Ernest Wallwork, Syracuse University This brilliant analysis of Durkheim's sociology is provocative and relevant to our troubled times. In shifting the center of gravity for Durkheimian studies from the Enlightenment to ancient Greece, the author rightly forces all of us to rethink what postmodernism, often defined as rebellion against the Enlightenment, is really all about. Professor Challenger has given us much food for thought by tracing the concept of community from Aristotle through Durkheim's era to our own fin de siecle. -- Stjepan Mestrovic This is a wonderfully mature analysis...of the history of western thought from Aristotle through Durkheim to post-modernism. -- Ralph Ketcham, Syracuse University By recovering an Aristotelian Durkheim, Challenger has rendered a service to social science and social ethics. We sociologists have largely lost the philosophical context of our founding generation, and therefore we miss much that is there in our basic texts. This book brilliantly remedies the situation with respect to the greatest sociologist of them all, Emile Durkheim. -- Robert N. Bellah