Background
Éspinas, Alfred-Victor was born on May 23, 1844 in Saint-Florentin. Yonne, France.
Éspinas, Alfred-Victor was born on May 23, 1844 in Saint-Florentin. Yonne, France.
Lycée de Dijon (Agrégé in Philosophy).
Taught philosophy at the Lycée de Dijon. Professor of Philosophy, then Dean of the Faculté des Lettres, University of Bordeaux. Professor of Economics, then (1904) of the History of Economic Doctrine, Sorbonne ( 1893-1922).
Member of the Institute of France, 1905.
Éspinas, P. (1961) ‘Influence de la pensée d’Alfred Éspinas sur celle de Durkheim'. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger: 138-9. Inspired by Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, Éspinas attempted to establish a systematic sociology on a biological, naturalistic foundation. The essentials of his ‘organicism’ were first introduced in Des Sociétés animales (1877). It was the study of animal colonies which led him to the conviction that bodily organs and individuals belong to the same series and are separated only by a contingent difference of degree, such that we may understand individuals in a society to be equivalent to organs in an organism. Thus Éspinas maintained that in mankind the laws which govern the formation of social organisms are the same as in the whole animal world: individuals, animal societies and human societies are alike in that they are all organisms; and as an assemblage of cells an individual is a society. On the basis of this view he attempted to identify different patterns of organization, beginning with primitive communal life in animals designed to satisfy simple vital needs and extending to sophisticated human societies based on morals and laws. This organic view was taken by some to imply a disparagement of humanity, although this had not been its intention. The great achievement of Éspinas was to have formulated an original theory of ‘conscience collective et de représentations collectives’, thereby preparing the ground for the work of Émile Durkheim and the sociological school. A fundamental difference between his sociology and that of Durkheim, however, was that for the latter, but not the former, social processes were something sui generis, not simply one with the organic. Sources: Benrubi; Huisman; Enciclopedia Filosofea.