QuestionsWhat is happiness?Without a limit set by society, desire has no end: anomie
What is happiness?A social matter

Without a limit set by society, desire has no end: anomie

Durkheim's anomie

Émile Durkheim 1858 · 1917No one can be happy without limits: only society can set the measure of our desires.
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What it claims

Happiness depends on society's regulating power. When it breaks down, even toward greater ease, desires have no bound left, people suffer and kill themselves more readily.

Why

We are happy only if our desires match our means, and the individual alone has nothing to set that measure.

The same idea through history
Épicure300 BCEpicurus also looks for a limit to desires, by sorting natural from vain desires. But for him it is the wise man who sets the limit, by reason; Durkheim thinks the individual alone cannot.
Émile Durkheim1897Durkheim (1897) studies suicide rates and reads in them the effect of a society that regulates, or no longer regulates, the desires of its members.
Richard Easterlin1974Easterlin finds that happiness does not follow the rise in average income, because aspirations rise with it. It is a close effect: a desire with no limit is not calmed when means increase.
In short

"Without a limit set by society, desire has no end: anomie" is an argument by Émile Durkheim (Suicide, Book II, ch. V (1897), 1897) on the question "What is happiness?" (answer: a social matter). Its claim: Happiness depends on society's regulating power. When it breaks down, even toward greater ease, desires have no bound left, people suffer and kill themselves more readily. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Suicide, Book II, ch. V (1897)
Valid with an implicit premise

Durkheim asks why rich, booming societies have more suicides, not fewer. He rules out poverty: in Ireland or Calabria, where life is hard, few kill themselves; and in times of prosperity, suicides rise as they do in disasters. He sees another cause. An animal is satisfied when its body is filled. Man has no limit of that kind: his desires are bottomless. So an outside moral authority must tell him "this far and no further", and only society can play that role. When it breaks down, desire overflows: Durkheim calls this disorder anomie.

P1A living being cannot be happy, or even live, unless its needs are sufficiently in proportion to its means. Otherwise they are constantly thwarted and cause suffering.
P2In animals, the body sets this limit. In man, nothing in the body or the mind marks an end to desires beyond what is necessary. Left to itself, our sensibility is a bottomless pit.
P3The only authority that can set a limit to men's desires is society: it is the only moral power above the individual that the individual accepts.
P4 · implicit premiseFor needs to be in proportion to means, a limit is needed, coming either from the individual or from an authority outside him.
P5The facts point the same way. Economic crises raise suicides, but not because they impoverish: crises of prosperity act the same way. What counts is the breakdown of the collective order.
Therefore happiness depends on society's regulating power. When it breaks down, even toward greater ease, desires have no bound left, people suffer and kill themselves more readily.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where someone is happy, needs match means, and the limit comes neither from the individual nor from society: for instance from chance, habit or an independent religious authority.
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P4. To be happy, needs must match means (P1), so a limit is needed. It does not come from the individual (P2). So it comes from an outside authority (P4), and only society can play that role (P3). The part "suicides rise when society breaks down" rests on the observed fact P5. Objections target P2 (the wise person can limit himself) and P5 (do suicide figures say what Durkheim reads in them?).
Analogy. A runner chasing a finish line that moves back at every step never feels he has arrived: he tires and loses heart. Durkheim thinks that without a collective rule saying where the finish is, our desires are like that race.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

E
Epicurus 300 BC · attacks premise 2

Natural and necessary desires are easily satisfied: whatever is natural is easily procured, and only the vain and worthless is hard to win. The individual can therefore set himself a limit alone, by sorting his desires with reason. Nothing requires an outside authority.

Durkheim replies
see the argument
Émile Durkheim 1897 · Durkheim, on the same problem
Durkheim writes that neither in man's organic constitution nor in his psychological constitution is there anything that marks an end to his inclinations. And he adds that men will limit their desires only before a rule they judge just, a law of justice they cannot dictate to themselves.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Epicurus and Durkheim are not speaking of the same people. Epicurus addresses the wise man who has reflected, Durkheim men as a whole. Durkheim answers in general terms, without naming Epicurus: the cited text contains no answer to the Epicurean sorting of desires.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: an open point. It is debated whether self-control can be learned alone or holds only through the norms of a community. Both have defenders.
R
Robert K. Merton 1938 · attacks premise 3

Merton takes up the word "anomie" but changes its meaning. For him, the trouble does not come from a society that no longer regulates desires. It comes from a society that, on the contrary, sets the same goal for all (success, mostly material) without giving all the legitimate means to reach it. So the very structure of society produces the strain, not its absence.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1938, after the author's death (1917).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Durkheim died more than twenty years before Merton and could not reply. A defender of Durkheim would note that Merton agrees on the central point: unhappiness has a social cause, and it is society, not the individual alone, that sets goals and limits.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: an open disagreement about the nature of anomie (absence of rules for Durkheim, gap between goals and means for Merton). Both versions are still used in sociology.
J
Jack D. Douglas 1967 · attacks premise 5

Official suicide figures are the result of decisions: doctors, police and families decide whether a death is a suicide, and they do so differently across places and religions. Lower rates may reflect better-hidden deaths, not fewer suicides. Durkheim's correlations are therefore less solid than he believed.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1967, after the author's death (1917).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Durkheim, who died fifty years earlier, already distrusted part of the statistics: he deems useless the "motives" for suicide recorded by officials, but trusts the rates themselves. Douglas's argument goes further. It says the figures reflect interpretations, not raw facts. This hits Durkheim's method without refuting it.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the criticism is widely accepted in part; many researchers nevertheless still use the broad trends in suicide rates, reading them with caution.