Andrey Bykov. 'Altruism, Egoism, and Social Ontology: Conceptions of Durkheim and Simmel'.

This paper is an attempt to explicate the ideas of altruism and egoism as they are presented in the works of two major sociological classics - Emile Durkheim and Georg Simmel - and to connect these ideas with their general sociological conceptions. It demonstrates that, despite the fact that modern sociology pays comparatively little attention to this topic, it was very important for both Durkheim and Simmel, who tried to justify this newborn science emphasizing collective nature of human beings. However, they used the terms 'altruism' and 'egoism' in a different way than today's social and behavior scientists do; this difference can be explained by general changes in social thought - as well as by the fact that altruistic and prosocial behavior became the subject of concern for other disciplines, such as biology and psychology. Nevertheless, it is argued that addressing classical conceptions may be useful for modern sociologists of morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]