Searle versus Durkheim

In The Construction of Social Reality (Searle 1995) and subsequent writings that develop its argument (notably Searle 2003 and his contributions to D’Andrade 2006), Searle proposes a general account of social reality, of what constitutes ‘social facts.’ His purpose is to give an account of social reality in general and of institutional reality in particular. On his account, animals—including human animals—are social, exhibiting collective intentionality, but human animals have institutions, created and sustained entirely in individual minds by collective intentionality (which cannot be reduced to individual intentionality) and enabling them, through the constitutive power of language, to act on desireindependent reasons. Several commentators (notably Gross 2006) have been struck by what they see as a convergence between this account and that of Emile Durkheim, who, one century earlier, set out his account of social reality in his The Rules of Sociological Method (Durkheim 1982), whose first chapter asks ‘What is a Social Fact?’, and in subsequent writings, including his essay on ‘Individual and Collective Representations’ (Durkheim 1953).