SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION AND SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE

The article discusses the relation between Sociology of Religion and Sociology of Knowledge in Durkheim's works. It circumscribes the historical conditions and their intellectual positions, justifying the project of building a specific domain in the sociological knowledge of religion. It emphasizes the epistemological foundations of his thought and its relation to Philosophy, in the face of which he seeks the autonomy of Sociology. Religion allows going beyond the individual doctrines and the materialistic one (Marxism), for it shows the group as a production that takes its consistence through the representations the group builds. The social foundation and its genesis are found in religion, as well as the principles of social cohesion and of the structuring of human thought: the categories of understanding.