Suicide and Sociology of morals

Abstract

This article examines Bayet’s treatment of moral assessments of suicide and the brief Durkheim’s research on the same subject in Suicide. Bayet endorses Durkheim’s methodological general approach (as presented by Durkheim in The Rules of Sociological Method), but criticizes the empirical data used by Durkheim in chapter II, book III of Suicide. Bayet enlarges the empirical basis and thus draws different theoretical conclusions: the values associated with individualism are tied to what he calls “nuanced moral” regarding suicide.