宗教生活的基本形式 (1912)

《宗教生活的基本形式》（法语：Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse），是法国社会学家爱米尔·涂尔干最后一部学术著作，出版于1912年。

《宗教生活的基本形式》为涂尔干晚年之作。意图为从初民社会的基本互动方式，建构出社会构成的最基本元素，加以认识。涂尔干归结出一个社会构成的最基本要素有：神圣／世俗之分，图腾崇拜，仪式，节庆活动，氏族等要素。涂尔干认为，这些元素无不以社会文化为模板。

主要概念

在日常生活里面，人们散居在自然各地，但是当聚集一起，开始交流时，其实为集体情感与集体意识的肇生与增强过程，这种“不知名力量”远超过个体可以控制的，于是被视为是具有神圣性的东西，而与各个个体、一般世俗物区隔开来。

在该书中，涂尔干认为神圣与世俗绝对的二分，是宗教最基本构成的第一要件。但人总想回到那个神圣而狂欢的状态，于是透过定期举办节庆活动与特殊节日，并透过反复的仪式举动，人们渐次可以再唤醒彼此身上的集体情感，最后共同达到先前的神圣状态。这就是庆典的重要性。同时，在共同交流的过程中，也由于那股力量、集体情感太过抽象而无以名状，当群体一齐认可的对象，就会把情感投射到它身上，于是出现图腾，以及将图腾转型到其他对象身上的“图腾标记”，这些东西多少都分享著最初的神圣性，并提醒着人们神圣的集体情感在哪。此即为图腾崇拜之源。

另外从上述延伸出来的，就是崇拜团体（氏族）内依照神／俗二分所建构出来的世界观与分类系统。按照神圣性，依次可以透过氏族的分类与诠释（包括对于善恶的观念），开展出对整个世界的观点与认知架构。这个想法，后来透过他侄子牟斯传给法国结构主义大师李维史陀，为结构主义最原初的模型。

影响

涂尔干虽然并未在该书完整陈述自己终身研究的奥义，上述几个元素的归总，对后世人文社会科学影响甚巨。但该书中因为取材及论述的问题，也遭到一些学者的批评。

The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (French: Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse), published by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1912, is a book that analyzes religion as a social phenomenon.

Overview

Durkheim attributes the development of religion to the emotional security attained through communal living. His study of totemic societies in Australia led to a conclusion that the animal or plant that each clan worshipped as a sacred power was in fact that society itself. Halfway through the text, Durkheim asks, "So if [the totem animal] is at once the symbol of the god and of the society, is that not because the god and the society are only one?"

According to Durkheim, early humans associated such feelings not only with one another, but as well with objects in their environment. This, Durkheim believed, led to the ascription of human sentiments and superhuman powers to these objects, in turn leading to totemism. The essence of religion, Durkheim finds, is the concept of the sacred, the only phenomenon which unites all religions. "A religion," writes Durkheim, "is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into a single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." Durkheim concludes:

In summing up, then, we must say that society is not at all the illogical or a-logical, incoherent and fantastic being which it has too often been considered. Quite on the contrary, the collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic life, since it is the consciousness of the consciousnesses. Being placed outside of and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes into communicable ideas. At the same time that it sees from above, it sees farther; at every moment of time, it embraces all known reality; that is why it alone can furnish the mind with the moulds which are applicable to the totality of things and which make it possible to think of them. It does not create these moulds artificially; it finds them within itself; it does nothing but become conscious of them.(445)

Durkheim means that the symbolization of the collective consciousness is done through the totemic animal. It is through this 'flag' that Australian Aboriginals become conscious of themselves within a system of knowledge given by the group itself.

Durkheim examined religion using such examples as Pueblo Indian rain dances, the religions of aboriginal communities in Australia, and alcoholic hallucinations.