Reviews

On Suicide by Émile Durkheim

cruelspirit's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

Suicide by Emile Durkheim is an interesting view into the suicide trends of 1800s Europe. As a modern text it is rather dated but it is an great text in the history of sociology. I enjoyed it as a history book on what life was like in 1800s Europe and found some interesting insight into how academics thought during that time. That being said, I really didn't find a lot of information sticking with me. 

bioethicists's review against another edition

4.0

Absolutely amazing analyses and well-backed conclusions. The only two failings are the writing (which is sometimes fantastic and sometimes lacking) and the strange veer into Protestant moralism towards the end. The last part disregards a lot of the work in the previous chapters in favor of privileging a (purportedly) secular sort of Protestant moralism regarding suicide (it even establishes, explicitly, that Judaism is the “most primitive”, then Catholicism, then Protestantism, the “most developed” of religions). The suggestions for mitigating suicide were marred by the author’s assumptions that suicide is inherently immoral and ought to be punished.