As an occasional feature on TELOSscope, we highlight a past Telos article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Maja Sidzinska looks at Guenther Roth’s “Durkheim and the Principles of 1789: The Issue of Gender Equality,” from Telos 82 (Winter 1989).
Guenther Roth positively establishes that the principles of 1789—liberté, egalité, fraternité—have been overridden by Émile Durkheim’s essentializing gender prescriptions in the service of social stability. He shows that mutually exclusive and unequal gender roles were central to Durkheim’s theory of organic solidarity. But Roth’s examination does more than just explain theoretical contradictions present in Durkheim’s work. His inquiry invites new investigations into Durkheim’s gender politics, the most intriguing one provoked by his comparative treatment of Durkheim’s and Marianne Weber’s perspectives on marriage and divorce. These contemporaries shared a political outlook yet diverged greatly in their ultimate directives for society.
