The Relationship of the Individual and Society in the Light of the Moral Theory of Emile Dürkheim. Part One.

The article, divided into two parts, deals with the interpretation of basic concepts by means of which the problem of the relationship between the individual and society is articulated in Emile Dürkheim. The interpretation is based on the strong moral accent in the relationship which also founds the dual perspective of Durkheim‘s reading of social reality. On the one hand, there is the positivist perspective of a social science dealing with facts, while on the other, there is in parallel coexistence the moral philosophical perspecive in which the relationship of the individual to society is perceived as that of a moral consciousness to transcendence. The article attempts to show how Durkheim‘s thought builds on those two contrary sources - the positivist method and a philosophical sense for the whole. Details of Durkheim‘s conception of human nature, its historical development and the moral function of society manifest the thinker‘s attempt to unite the two sources in a way which transforms the traditional problems of the philosophy of man into the language of social science in preserving their specific nature. The second part of the text deals with a detailed analysis of Durkheim‘s theory of moral action and moral value while observing the extent to which this theory overcomes Kant‘s formalism and hard-line positivism.