Durkheim's Influence On Marc Holoch

Durkheim is a renowned academic, even more so in France, and often heralded as one of the originators of the field of sociology and the division of the social sciences as we know it today . His influence proved so great that Durkheimian, as a school of thought, emerged, playing an important role in the creation of a historiography separate to the German dominated historicism mentioned earlier . Although Durkheim’s influence expanded beyond history, primarily concerned as he was with sociology, his involvement in history is difficult to overlook, particularly due to the influence it had on Marc Bloch in this case. There should be no uncertainty here, Durkheim was intensely interested in history, seeing it as a necessary component of sociology and going so far as to conflate the two together, seeing history and sociology as studying similar phenomenon from different perspectives; history studying the particular whereas sociology examined the general . Durkheim’s opinion

First, a wealth of evidence exists to indicate that Durkheim, and his works, had a significant influence on Marc Bloch, many of Bloch’s colleagues, including Lucian Febvre, described Bloch as captivated by Durkheimian thought, one of Bloch’s peers even writing;

“Of all the disciplines which have acted on Marc Bloch, it is certainly the sociology of Durkheim which has exercised upon him the greatest influence.”

And Marc Bloch himself was open about the central role Durkheimian thought played in his own academic work, reiterating his support for much of, but not all, its ideas