Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2018, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (6): 125-154.

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Self-Preservation and Sociology's Modern Moral-Personality: The Duel Structure in Suicide

SUN Feiyu   

  1. Department of Sociology, Peking University
  • Online:2018-11-20 Published:2018-11-20

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Abstract:

According to Durkheim's definition,suicide definitively means a conscious choice of death. The opposite of death is being and there is no middle ground in between. Therefore, when Durkheim discusses suicide,he indirectly touches the issue of living,or a choice of self-preservation,as well. This veiled discussion was unacknowledged by the Chinese mainland sociology because the widely adopted Chinese version of Durkheim's Suicide missed out most of the textual evidence of these clues in the book. This paper offers a textual analysis of Durkheim's Suicide to identify such clues. Durkheim treats different types of suicide as the extreme form of expression of different types of morals,and,in many places, his discussion touches the question of under what kind of moral condition that one could preserve oneself. The paper argues that there is an inner connection between Durkheim's definition on three types of suicide and his definition of sociology. As a social scientist on morality, he sees sociology as an expression of certain modern morality,the same kind of moral condition he calls for in his book. This moral entity signifies self-preservation for both modern individual and sociology.

Key words: moral personality, sociology, suicide, self-preservation