The concept of sacred in the French sociological school

The paper deals with the concept of sacred in the French sociological school. While creating this theory, E. Durkheim and M. Mauss criticized the views of classical English anthropologists who identified cults as animistic practices. E. Durkheim invoked the concept of religion by W. Robertson Smith, developed and changed his main ideas to some extent. Further ideas of E. Durkheim and his followers were based on the theory of totemism as the original historical form of sacredness with no place for gods as supernatural persons. Another feature of the concept of sacred was the division of society into the sacred and profane spheres. It was popular with the French scientific environment, but British social anthropologists failed to accept it. The French theory of sacred was supplemented by the idea of M. Mauss about “mana” as an impersonal magical power without the need to appeal to divine, transcendent powers. The interpretation of this category by French sociologists was similar to the concept of electricity in the theory of animal magnetism. At the same time, E. Durkheim and his followers did not present the substantial distinction between the holy (ritually pure sacredness) and defiled (ritually impure sacredness) elements. Despite the fact that the theory of sacred in the French sociological school was strongly criticized by British social anthropologists, this doctrine had a considerable impact on the schools of thought in the second half of the 20th century. Nowadays, the Russian scientific community pays much attention to this concept, as evidenced by the increased number of relevant publications. However, there is little research on the relationship between the concept of sacred and the socialist ideology of French socialists.