Anomia and Sin in Durkheim's Thought

In 1887, Guyau published a work on religion in which he advocated "anomie" as a rational alternative to dogmatism. Lalande ([1926] 1976: 61) believes that Guyau coined the term to designate "le nom d'anomie pour l'opposer a l'autonomie des Kantiens" (Kant's "autonomy," with its heavy sense of duty was indeed repressive). Durkheim reviewed Guyau's book that same year (in Pickering, 1975: 24-38) and expressed no problem with Guyau's definition of anomie, only with his treatment of individualism as a correlate of anomie. Orru (1983) thinks that Durkheim actually learned of the concept of anomie from Guyau, which would be difficult to prove, given Durkheim's rabbinical background, but is correct that Durkheim knew of it long before his Division of Labor (1893). A superficial glance at the word "anomie" and its derivatives (anomia, anomy) has been sufficient to convince a generation of scholars that it is derived from "a-nomos," lack of law. But Lyonnet and Sabourin (1970: 42-43), in their analysis of the Biblical use of anomy as sin, challenge the belief that "anomia really means what etymology, a-nomos, would suggest: 'lawlessness,' disobedience to, disrespect for the law." They note that "nowhere in the New Testament is anomia related to nomos, 'law'." Guyau and Durkheim were aware of this, and referred to "rule," not law, in their discussions of anomy. Thus Guyau ([1887] 1962: 374) claimed that "what we have called moral anomy" is "the absence of any fixed moral rule." Durkheim used this classical notion of anomy as "lack of rule" in Division of Labor ([1893] 1933: 431), Suicide ([1897] 1951: 257), Socialism and SaintSimon ([1896] 1958: 240) and elsewhere. Lalande ([1926] 1976: 906-907) warns that Durkheim's use of "regle" should not be confounded with the "vulgar" meanings of "law" or "norm" sometimes attached to it. "Regle" was used in the 19th century in the classical Greek sense of a formula which prescribes the existence of a phenomenon. Indeed, Robert Hertz (1922), one of Durkheim's most brilliant disciples, treated "sin" as "anomia," that is, as an attack on a moral order that does not necessarily imply the accomplishment of an act, and that is radically different from crime. Nielsen (1983) has explored the anomia-sin connection with regard to the