The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Emile Durkheim
Published 1912 · 416 pages · 160,000 words · about 11 hours at an average pace · Anthropology & Folklore, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics & Society
How hard is The Elementary Forms of Religious Life to read?
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life scores 33 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 50 out of 100
- Academic philosophical and sociological vocabulary. Some ethnographic terminology.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Abstraction: 65 out of 100
- Highly abstract theorizing about the nature of religion, knowledge, and society.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Extremely dense with argument, ethnographic data, and philosophical reasoning.
- Narrative indirection: 18 out of 100
- Systematic argument but the path from Australian totemism to epistemology is indirect.
- Symbolic density: 32 out of 100
- Totems as symbols of society. The sacred as collective representation.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Earnest, systematic academic tone with little irony.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Durkheim states his thesis clearly and builds to definitive conclusions.
- Structural complexity: 42 out of 100
- Three books with multiple chapters. Complex hierarchical argument.
How The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is regarded
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life holds a literary regard score of 79 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.