People of Sociology - Alex Karni (Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim)

Alex Karni

Mr. Roddy

October 12, 2020

Karl Marx is best known not as a philosopher but as a revolutionary, whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. Marx is a huge influence in the creation of the modern world. He was trained as a philosopher but then around his mid twenties, he leaned towards economics and politics. Marx joined a movement known as Young Hegelians, who strongly criticized the political and cultural establishments of the day. He became a write which got him expelled by the governments of Germany, France, and Belgium. Later on in 1848, Marx and fellow German thinker Friedrich Engels published “The Communist Manifesto,” which introduced their concept of socialism as a natural result of the conflicts inherent in the capitalist system. He wrote another book 19 years later called Das Kapital, which consisted of his vision of capitalism and its self destruction. 

Sources: 

https://www.history.com/topics/germany/karl-marx

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/

Durkheim was born into a Jewish family and he was expected to follow in his dads footsteps as being a rabbi but chose to go a different path. Later on his exceptional grades got him into École Normale Supérieure (ENS), a well regarded graduate school in Paris. Durkheim began getting very interested in a scientific approach to society. He graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1882. In 1885 he left for Germany, where he studied sociology for two years. Durkheim's period in Germany resulted in the publication of numerous articles on German social science and philosophy, which spread to France at the University of Bordeaux in 1887. In 1893, Durkheim published his first work of writing called "The Division Of Labor in Society," where he intrude the concept of "anomie" or the breakdown of the influence of social norms on individuals within a society. In 1895, he published his second major work which was called "The Rules fo Sociological Method," which stated what sociology is and how it was supposed to be done. His third major work was on the concept of Suicide, a case that studied the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics. 

Source:

https://www.thoughtco.com/emile-durkheim-3026488