TWO TURNING POINTS OR RELIGION IN DURKHEIM'S OEUVRE BEFORE THE ELEMENTARY FORMS

Durkheim developed an interest in the study of religion at an early stage of his thought, and he never abandoned it. He formulated very early on his research program, whose main topics remain the same throughout his work: the definition of religion, its social dimension, its relationship with morals, its future in modern societies. But he gave quite different answers at different times to the same questions: on two occasions, around 1897 and around 1907, a theoretical shift in his sociology of religion may actually be discerned. Re-examining the complex elaboration of this sociology can throw new light on the aims of Elementary Forms of Religious Life and on the problems Durkheim tried to solve in his last masterpiece