Apologies for this being late, I had to stay late at work today.
Today's second reading made me reflect upon the nature of religion. We're used to associating it with elaborate godheads and intricate systems of belief with some form of ecclesiastical authority. But religion can also be a much broader topic, like Durkheim himself discussed in our earlier reading. In the past, religion was everything, and today individualism is no different. Its omnipresence in our commercial society is just as potent as the papacy in late Rome. And Durkheim goes so far as to suggest that our abhorrence when rights are disregarded is a positively modern notion, a profane offense against our new god. But this new god is not like the past gods who transcended human authority, rather it is a god composed of man, acting in accordance with Kant's Categorical Imperative. For Durkheim, the writings of Kant and Rousseau created a quasi-religious idol in the form of the idealized and individualized man, acting with respect to the collectivized interests of each self-determining fellowman in his society.
But, this god is no less artificial and necessarily evil than the past ones. Durkheim believes that the necessary inflexibility of the axioms of our individualized religion prevent us from treating our moral wounds; we cannot utilitarianly aid the whole without occasionally suspending the individual rights of the few.
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