Nasrallah Amin Kalibar, preceptor, Department of Theology and Islamic Sciences, Payam Noor University, Iran)

Abstract

Emile Durkheim, a French philosopher and sociologist, explained the relationship between religion and society in his book »The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life« by examining Australian totemism. According to Durkheim, religion has no divine or revelatory origin, but the origin of religion is society. In his view, society creates religion in order to constantly reproduce its religious sentiments through stimulation And in this view, he goes so far as to say that society is God. in the present article, we will examine and critique his view from the perspective of the " phenomenology of religion " method. According to the findings of the phenomenological method of religion, the structure of primitive religions is different from the structure of monotheistic religions, and the social form of these two structures is fundamentally different; So that the social form fits the primitive religions, "tribe" and the social form fits the monotheistic religions, "society" Accordingly, Durkheim confused religion between the two concepts of "tribe" and "society" and, consequently, the requirements of the two. The type of this research is fundamental-applied and can have a practical aspect for researchers who want to use this method in researching the history of religions by clarifying the theoretical foundations of the phenomenological method of religion. The main hypothesis of the present article is that from the perspective of the phenomenology of religion, Durkheim's view of the relationship between religion and society is consistent only with primitive religions.

Keywords

• durkheim
• religion
• society
• tribe
• phenomenology of religion
• primitive religions
• monotheistic religions