Suicide (Durkheim book)

Lore & Background

Durkheim defined suicide as 'all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result.' He identified four types: egoistic suicide from lack of integration, altruistic suicide from over-integration, anomic suicide from moral deregulation during upheaval, and fatalistic suicide from excessive regulation (which he considered theoretical). His findings included higher suicide rates among men than women (though married women who remained childless for several years ended up with a high suicide rate), among single people than those in a sexual relationship, among people without children than people with children, among Protestants than Catholics and Jews, among soldiers than civilians, in times of peace than in times of war (for example, the suicide rate in France fell after the coup d'état of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte; after war broke out in 1866 between Austria and Italy, the suicide rate fell by 14 per cent in both countries), and in Scandinavian countries. He also concluded that the higher the education level, the more likely it was that an individual would choose suicide, but that there is more correlation between an individual's religion and suicide rate than an individual's education level—Jewish people were generally highly educated but had a low suicide rate.

Reader's Guide

Durkheim's *Suicide* remains a landmark in sociology for establishing a methodological framework to study social facts through statistical analysis. Its typology of suicide—egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic—continues to inform discussions of social integration and regulation. Critics have accused Durkheim of committing an ecological fallacy by inferring individual behavior from aggregate data, though some scholars argue his intent was holistic, explaining variation in suicide rates across social environments, not individual cases. The Protestant–Catholic suicide rate difference has been contested, with later research suggesting it may be limited to German-speaking Europe. Despite these criticisms, the work is frequently cited as a classic example of sociological theory and has influenced control theory. The book's legacy lies in its demonstration that seemingly personal acts like suicide can be systematically explained by social forces.

Did You Know?

• Durkheim's book was the second methodological study of a social fact, preceded by a 1881 work by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who later became president of Czechoslovakia.
• Durkheim found that the suicide rate in France fell after the coup d'état of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, and that after war broke out in 1866 between Austria and Italy, the suicide rate fell by 14 per cent in both countries.
• Durkheim considered fatalistic suicide theoretical and probably nonexistent in reality, though recent empirical evidence suggests it does exist in contemporary society.
• Durkheim concluded that married women who remained childless for several years ended up with a high suicide rate, comparable to men.
• Jean Baechler sharply critiqued Durkheim's correlation between religion and suicide, stating 'there is no intelligible relationship possible between (the) various religions and suicide.'

Structural Logic and Denominational Range

The compilation is organized hierarchically under Western religions, with Christianity subdivided into pre-schism, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Protestant branches. The inclusion criterion is deliberately narrow: a person's status as a child of a cleric or preacher must be important, and preferably critical, to why they are remembered. This standard filters out mere biographical trivia and keeps the focus on cases where the clerical background shaped the individual's public identity or work. The temporal span is vast, reaching from Saint Patrick—son of a British deacon and grandson of a priest—to contemporary figures such as Amy Coney Barrett, a U.S. Supreme Court justice whose father was a Catholic deacon, and George Stephanopoulos, a former altar boy. The list also captures transitional moments in church history, such as Thomas I of York, who became Archbishop during a period when clerical celibacy was the rule but still unevenly enforced. By mapping entries across these denominational and chronological axes, the compilation reveals how the social weight of a parent's pulpit role persisted across centuries and confessional lines.

Spectrum of Professions and Public Roles

What strikes the reader most immediately is the sheer range of fields represented. In politics, the list spans continents and eras: John Adams among the American Founding Fathers, Gordon Brown as former British prime minister, Stacey Abrams as a voting-rights activist whose both parents were Methodist ministers, and Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Premier of Queensland, son of a Lutheran pastor. The arts and letters are equally well populated, from the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen to James Baldwin, whose novel Go Tell it on the Mountain directly engages his upbringing under a preacher stepfather, and Tori Amos, whose songs Crucify and Icicle wrestle overtly with her clerical background. Even entertainment and sport appear, with Roy Acuff, the self-styled King of Country Music, and John Boyega, the Star Wars actor, both listed as children of clergy. The breadth underscores that a parent's vocation at the pulpit did not predetermine a single career path for the next generation.

Clerical Heritage and Opposing Worldviews

A particularly compelling thread runs through entries whose subjects rejected, mocked, or actively opposed the religious tradition their parent embodied. Ingmar Bergman, the celebrated Swedish filmmaker, is explicitly noted as a devout atheist despite being the son of a Lutheran minister. Yevgeny Zamyatin, the author of We, was a Bolshevik who initially backed the October Revolution, yet his father was an Eastern Orthodox priest. Abraham Kovoor, listed under Oriental Orthodoxy, is described as a skeptic and atheist. Nikolai Chernyshevsky, a socialist thinker and materialist, likewise came from a clerical household. In the Protestant section, J. D. Beresford, an agnostic, wrote The Hampdenshire Wonder, which features an unflattering minister character, while Demetri Martin, a comedian, served as an altar boy before building a career in stand-up. Tori Amos's songwriting is cited as dealing overtly with her background. These cases illustrate that the very proximity to religious authority could provoke a fierce counter-identity, making the clerical parentage not a source of continuity but a defining point of rupture that shaped the individual's public persona.

Multi-Generational and Sibling Clusters

Several entries reveal that clerical parentage was not a one-generation phenomenon but a family-wide pattern stretching across siblings and even many ancestors. The Brontë household in the Protestant section is the most densely clustered: Anne, Charlotte, and Emily as sister novelists, plus their brother Branwell, all children of an Anglican vicar. The Baillie family of Scotland produced three prominent sons from a Free Church minister—John and Donald Macpherson as theologians and Peter as a missionary in India. The Benson siblings, including Robert Hugh, A. C., E. F., and Margaret, were all authors, and their father was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Jane Austen's own mother's grandfather and her brother James were also clergymen, embedding the vocation in her immediate family tree. On the Catholic side, George Coșbuc, the Romanian poet, is noted for having fourteen generations of Eastern-rite priests in his family, including his father. The Borgia and Farnese dynasties similarly show clerical roots producing multiple historically significant children. These clusters suggest that in certain communities the pulpit was less a single career choice than an inherited social position that shaped an entire family's trajectory across generations.