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Current Issue
Q&A
/ January 29, 2026
How Was Sociology Invented?
A conversation with Kwame Anthony Appiah about the religious origins of social theory and his recent book Captive Gods.
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins
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The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah’s latest book, Captive Gods: Religion and the Rise of Social Science, is concerned with the origins of the social sciences. His main claim is that “it’s through religion that society becomes a disciplinary object.” What Appiah means by this is that the founders of the modern social sciences—notably Edward Burnett Tylor, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, George Simmel—used religion as a framework through which they established sociology as a discipline. But what religious assumption, then, did their sociological analysis assume? And what significance does the religious origins of the social sciences have for contemporary social thought? The Nation spoke with Appiah about the anti-secular stance of right-wing movements, the invention of sociology, and his new book. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
—Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins: This book is principally concerned about the connection between religion and the rise of the social sciences. Perhaps its central thesis is the idea that “it’s through religion that society becomes a disciplinary object.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
Kwame Anthony Appiah: What I mean is that “religion” was the way the classical sociologists like like Emil Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber first managed to turn “society” into something you could actually study. Durkheim’s Elementary Forms defines religion as a system of beliefs and practices tied to sacred things, and what matters there is how those beliefs and rituals bind people together into a moral community—the church. For him, the believer isn’t wrong to think he depends on a higher power. That power does exist, but it’s society itself. For Weber, the religious creeds and customs of a people were the key to understanding the historical trajectory of a civilization. Simmel, meanwhile, thought of God as a kind of personification of society, a way of absolutizing our own rules. And then he borrowed from Friedrich Schleiermacher’s idea that religion is rooted in the feeling of absolute dependence on God and argued that this mirrors our dependence on the social order as it stretches across time and space. What we feel as religiosity, he suggested, is really an intimation of how society constitutes us and keeps us connected.
A critical point is that it’s in the same line of work that we see a new idea of “society” taking shape. Earlier thinkers tended to see …
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Current Issue
Q&A
/ January 29, 2026
How Was Sociology Invented?
A conversation with Kwame Anthony Appiah about the religious origins of social theory and his recent book Captive Gods.
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
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The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah’s latest book, Captive Gods: Religion and the Rise of Social Science, is concerned with the origins of the social sciences. His main claim is that “it’s through religion that society becomes a disciplinary object.” What Appiah means by this is that the founders of the modern social sciences—notably Edward Burnett Tylor, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, George Simmel—used religion as a framework through which they established sociology as a discipline. But what religious assumption, then, did their sociological analysis assume? And what significance does the religious origins of the social sciences have for contemporary social thought? The Nation spoke with Appiah about the anti-secular stance of right-wing movements, the invention of sociology, and his new book. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
—Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins: This book is principally concerned about the connection between religion and the rise of the social sciences. Perhaps its central thesis is the idea that “it’s through religion that society becomes a disciplinary object.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
Kwame Anthony Appiah: What I mean is that “religion” was the way the classical sociologists like like Emil Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber first managed to turn “society” into something you could actually study. Durkheim’s Elementary Forms defines religion as a system of beliefs and practices tied to sacred things, and what matters there is how those beliefs and rituals bind people together into a moral community—the church. For him, the believer isn’t wrong to think he depends on a higher power. That power does exist, but it’s society itself. For Weber, the religious creeds and customs of a people were the key to understanding the historical trajectory of a civilization. Simmel, meanwhile, thought of God as a kind of personification of society, a way of absolutizing our own rules. And then he borrowed from Friedrich Schleiermacher’s idea that religion is rooted in the feeling of absolute dependence on God and argued that this mirrors our dependence on the social order as it stretches across time and space. What we feel as religiosity, he suggested, is really an intimation of how society constitutes us and keeps us connected.
A critical point is that it’s in the same line of work that we see a new idea of “society” taking shape. Earlier thinkers tended to see …
How Was Sociology Invented?
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How Was Sociology Invented?
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Current Issue
Q&A
/ January 29, 2026
How Was Sociology Invented?
A conversation with Kwame Anthony Appiah about the religious origins of social theory and his recent book Captive Gods.
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah’s latest book, Captive Gods: Religion and the Rise of Social Science, is concerned with the origins of the social sciences. His main claim is that “it’s through religion that society becomes a disciplinary object.” What Appiah means by this is that the founders of the modern social sciences—notably Edward Burnett Tylor, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, George Simmel—used religion as a framework through which they established sociology as a discipline. But what religious assumption, then, did their sociological analysis assume? And what significance does the religious origins of the social sciences have for contemporary social thought? The Nation spoke with Appiah about the anti-secular stance of right-wing movements, the invention of sociology, and his new book. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
—Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins: This book is principally concerned about the connection between religion and the rise of the social sciences. Perhaps its central thesis is the idea that “it’s through religion that society becomes a disciplinary object.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
Kwame Anthony Appiah: What I mean is that “religion” was the way the classical sociologists like like Emil Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber first managed to turn “society” into something you could actually study. Durkheim’s Elementary Forms defines religion as a system of beliefs and practices tied to sacred things, and what matters there is how those beliefs and rituals bind people together into a moral community—the church. For him, the believer isn’t wrong to think he depends on a higher power. That power does exist, but it’s society itself. For Weber, the religious creeds and customs of a people were the key to understanding the historical trajectory of a civilization. Simmel, meanwhile, thought of God as a kind of personification of society, a way of absolutizing our own rules. And then he borrowed from Friedrich Schleiermacher’s idea that religion is rooted in the feeling of absolute dependence on God and argued that this mirrors our dependence on the social order as it stretches across time and space. What we feel as religiosity, he suggested, is really an intimation of how society constitutes us and keeps us connected.
A critical point is that it’s in the same line of work that we see a new idea of “society” taking shape. Earlier thinkers tended to see …
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