Durkheim, Suicide and Sept. 11, 2001
Emile Durkheim was a sociologist who tried to measure such abstract concepts as "religion" and "suicide" in society. "Collective tendencies have an existence of their own; they are forces as real as cosmic forces, though of another sort; they, likewise, affect the individual from without"(Thompson, 1982, 109). To Durkheim, suicide was a term applied to all "cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result"(Thompson, 1982, 110).
Durkheim divided the suicidal act into several categories. One of the classes that he considers, and that has a stunning importance following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, is that of "obligatory altruistic suicide" (Thompson, 1982, 122). In this act, argues Durkheim, society is seen as far more important than any individual, and the worth of any individual must be subjugated to the needs of the society. Primitive societies that were studied by Durkheim had certain types of people who were more or less required to kill themselves---old men, widows, servants and true believers, as in the case of Masada where hundreds of Hebrews killed themselves rather than live under Roman rule. Durkheim suggests that this kind of "sacrifice," is non-selfish and therefore altruistic.
However, (obvious as it may seem), even the altruist kills himself because he is unhappy. But Durkheim analyzes the levels and causes of this unhappiness. He thinks that the egoist (a person directly opposite of the "altruist") is unhappy because he sees nothing "real" in the world besides the individual, while the altruist is sad because the individual seems so "unreal".
To Durkheim, altruistic suicide demonstrates his major thesis, which seems to be to reject any definition of suicide which appeals to subjective mental states--motives, purposes, general lassitude, or depression, for instance etc.